South Korean fire crews battled what the acting president said on Wednesday were some of the worst wildfires ever in the country. At least 18 people have died, according to the authorities, as strong winds and dry conditions helped fuel the fires.

Two ancient Buddhist temples were among the more than 200 buildings damaged or destroyed since the fires began on Friday. Tens of thousands of acres have been scorched in the country’s southeast, the government said, and more than 27,000 people evacuated, including around 500 inmates from a prison.

Eight fires were still burning on Wednesday morning, up from six on Monday.

In addition to the fatalities, at least 19 people were injured, six of them seriously, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday. Many of those who died were in their 60s and 70s, a local police official said in a briefing. The government noted that 43,000 acres had been damaged.

The fires appeared to be “breaking the record for the worst wildfires ever,” said acting President Han Duck-soo, who just this week was reinstated after being impeached in December. In a statement, his office said the fires were spreading beyond initial predictions.

Among the people evacuated from their homes were residents of the 600-year-old Andong Hahoe folk village, a UNESCO World Heritage site more than 130 miles southeast of Seoul. Villagers described the blaze as “the devil” on social media and expressed frustration at the lack of success in putting it out.

Flames and smoke damaged 209 buildings across the region, according to the ministry statement, including two temples. Videos from local news stations showed the inferno surrounding and closing in on the temples, both more than 1,000 years old.

The Korea Heritage Service said on social media on Wednesday that some treasures from one, the Gounsa temple, including a stone Buddha statue, had been removed before the fire reached it.

Local officials closed off roads and suspended train services, and some places lost power.

The government said that firefighters had contained nearly 70 percent of the largest blaze in Euiseong County, west of the folk village. Their efforts were slowed by winds of 56 miles per hour starting Tuesday afternoon, which prevented them from mobilizing helicopters and drones.

The first blaze started on Friday afternoon in Sancheong County, around 160 miles southeast of the capital. The Interior Ministry said it was investigating claims that a farmer’s lawn mower had started that one.

Separate fires broke out in nearby counties and cities in the following days from episodes at a graveyard and at a garbage incinerator. Officials attributed the rapid spread of the fires to dry weather conditions.

The Justice Ministry said it had transferred around 500 inmates in North Gyeongsang Province overnight on Tuesday, according to Yonhap News.

The call of a conch shell roused the dolphin hunters from their beds. Under moonlight, the six men shuffled to the village church.

There a priest led them in a whispered prayer, his voice barely audible over the sound of crashing waves; the tide was high that day. Saltwater pooled in parts of the village, which is on Fanalei Island, an ever-shrinking speck of land that is part of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.

They paddled out in wooden canoes before first light, cutting through the darkness until they were miles away from shore. After hours of scanning the horizon, one of the hunters, Lesley Fugui, saw a fin slice the glassy water. He raised a 10-foot-long bamboo pole with a piece of cloth tied to the end, alerting the others of his discovery. Then he made a phone call to his wife. He had found dolphins. The hunt would begin.

These men are among the last dolphin hunters of Solomon Islands. Some conservationists say the slaughter is cruel and unnecessary. But for the 130 or so residents of Fanalei, the traditional hunt has taken on renewed urgency as climate change threatens their home. They say they need the dolphins for their lucrative teeth, which are used as local currency, to buy land on higher ground and escape their sinking home.

Each tooth fetches 3 Solomon Islands dollars (roughly $0.36) — a price set by the chiefs of Fanalei — and a single hunt of around 200 dolphins can bring in tens of thousands of dollars, more than any other economic activity on the island.

“We feel sorry, too, for killing the dolphins, but we don’t really have a choice,” Mr. Fugui said. He would be willing to abandon the hunts, he added, if there were an alternative way to secure his family’s future.

Crops can no longer be grown on Fanalei, which is about a third of the size of Central Park in New York City. The once fertile land has been ruined by encroaching saltwater. The government has promoted seaweed farming as a source of income, while overseas conservation groups have offered cash to end the hunts. But the ocean remains both an existential threat and the villagers’ most profitable resource. Government research suggests the island could be underwater by the end of the century.

“For a low-lying island like ours, we witness with our own eyes how sea rise is affecting our lives,” said Wilson Filei, the head chief of Fanalei.

Over time, dolphin teeth have allowed the villagers to pay for a new church, a sea wall and an extension to the local primary school.

During the hunting season, which runs from January through April, people here can kill up to a thousand dolphins, but the hunters say that the weather is becoming increasingly unpredictable, making it harder for them to locate and trap a pod.

While dolphin meat is eaten and bartered with neighboring islands for food, betel nuts and other products, the teeth are the true prize of the hunt. They are used for cultural activities, and families of prospective grooms buy them by the hundreds to give to a woman during a traditional bride price ceremony.

In recent years, most villagers have fled to a neighboring island. They continue to hunt dolphins from there, saying they need to buy more land to house those left behind and support their growing population.

Dolphin hunting is a community affair in Fanalei. When Mr. Fugui raised his flag that morning, he set off a cacophony of delight. Children climbed trees to watch the hunters and cheered “kirio” — dolphin in the local Lau language — so that every resident would know that the hunt had started. Men in canoes hanging close to shore broke through the waves into the open ocean to help the hunters form a semicircle around the dolphins and corral them to land.

The teeth, once collected, are shared among every family according to a strict tier system: The hunters get the largest share (“first prize”); married men who didn’t participate get the next largest portion; and the remaining teeth are divided among widows, orphans and other households without a male representative.

Village leaders also set aside a portion of the teeth in what they call a “community basket” for major works. One day, they hope this will include the purchase of land to expand a resettlement village on the larger South Malaita Island.

These shares have been an important safety net to residents like Eddie Sua and his family. Mr. Sua was once a skilled fisherman and dolphin hunter who became mysteriously paralyzed from the neck down two years ago, and he has been bedridden ever since. These days, during high tide, his home floods.

“We have to be scared of these floods, because that’s what will make us act to save our lives,” he said, watching the saltwater lick at the sides of his bed.

Dolphin hunting is very good or “good tumas,” Mr. Sua’s wife, Florence Bobo, said in the local pijin language, especially now that her husband is unable to support the family like he once did. They both hope to eventually have enough money to relocate off the island.

“If we didn’t have dolphin teeth, we’d have no other choice but to eat rocks,” Mr. Sua joked.

But a successful hunt is never a certainty. After spotting the dolphins, Mr. Fugui and the other hunters started beating fist-size rocks under the water to drive the pod toward the shore. But a trawler passed behind them, the roar of its engine drowning out the dull thuds of their rocks. The dolphins scattered and the men returned empty-handed.

Halfway through this year’s season, there was only one successful hunt in Solomon Islands, where a village near Fanalei killed over 300 dolphins.

Experts say it’s unclear whether dolphin hunting is sustainable. Rochelle Constantine, a marine biologist who teaches at the University of Auckland, and Kabini Afia, a climate and environmental researcher from the Solomon Islands, said that some of the more commonly hunted species appear to have healthy populations. But the effects of the hunt are still unclear on more coastal and smaller dolphins.

For the people of Fanalei, the more pressing question isn’t the future of the dolphins — it’s their own survival in the face of rising seas.

“Dolphin hunting may be our identity,” Mr. Fugui said, “but our lives and the lives of our children — that’s what’s important.”