The goal of this research is to transpose the unprecedented 2003 European excessive heat event to
 six Korean cities and to develop meteorological analogs for each. Since this heat episode is not a
model but an actual event, we can use a plausible analog to assess the risk of increasing heat on t
hese cities instead of an analog that is dependent on general circulation (GCM)
modeling or the development of arbitrary scenarios. Initially, the 2003 summer meteorological conditions from Paris are characterized statistically
 and these characteristics are transferred to the Korean cites. Next, the new meteorological
 dataset for each Korean city is converted into a daily air mass calendar. We can then
 determine the frequency and character of “offensive” air masses in the Korean cities
that are historically associated with elevated heat-related mortality. One unexpected
result is the comparative severity of the very hot summer of 1994 in Korea, which actually
 eclipsed the 2003 analog. The persistence of the offensive air masses is considerably
 greater for the summer of 1994, as were dew point temperatures for a majority of the
 Korean cities. For all the Korean cities but one, the summer of 1994 is associated with
more heat-related deaths than the analog summer, in some cases yielding a sixfold increase
over deaths in an average summer. The Korean cities appear less sensitive to heat-related
mortality problems during very hot summers than do large eastern and Midwestern US cities,
 possibly due to a lesser summer climate variation and efficient social services available during extreme heat episodes