Rising sea levels caused by climate change and exacerbated by annual flooding could overwhelm the North Korean city of Sinuiju — one of the country’s most important trading hubs and home to nearly 300,000 people — by the year 2050, a recent scientific study reported.

The study, published last week by the research organization Climate Central, found that more than a quarter-billion people worldwide, including hundreds of thousands of North Koreans, now live on land that will be inundated by the middle of the century if sea levels continue to rise and governments do not move faster to fight it.