Strong typhoon lashes South Korea after tearing through Japanese islands
SEOUL, South Korea — A powerful typhoon damaged buildings, flooded roads and knocked out power to thousands of homes in South Korea on Monday after battering islands in southern Japan, killing one person and injuring dozens of others, before weakening as it passed North Korea.
The Korea Meteorological Administration downgraded Typhoon Haishen to a tropical storm Monday night as it made landfall near the North Korean coastal city of Hamhung. During its period as a typhoon, Haishen packed maximum winds of about 80 miles per hour as it barreled through South Korea’s southern and eastern regions in the morning.
Japanese disaster management officials in Kagoshima
said a woman in her 70s died of a head injury after falling into a roadside ditch while evacuating from a coastal town as Haishen lashed southwestern Japan over the weekend with strong winds and rain. Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency said at least 38 other people were injured, five of them seriously, and at least four people missing after a landslide damaged a house and a construction company office.
In South Korea, at least two people were missing — one after getting swept away by water in a drainage channel at a limestone mine in the eastern town of Samcheok and the other while trying to cross a small river on a tractor in the southeastern town of Uljin.
At least five people were hurt, including one in Busan who sustained light injuries after a car flipped over in strong winds, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said.
The storm also destroyed or sank around 80 fishing boats, and caused generating turbines at two nuclear reactors in the southeastern city of Gyeongju to automatically stop. No leakage of radioactive materials was detected.
Hundreds of flights in and out of the southern island province of Jeju and across the mainland were canceled. Some bridges and railroad sections were shut down, thousands of fishing boats and other vessels were moved to safety, and more than 3,000 residents in the southern mainland regions were evacuated because of the possibility of landslides and other concerns.
Haishen, which means “sea god” in Chinese, plowed through Okinawa and other southern Japanese islands over the weekend. Traffic was still paralyzed in places, bullet train service was suspended, and most domestic flights in and out of airports in southwestern Japan were canceled Monday.
Electricity was restored to thousands of homes in Japan, but more than 340,000 others were still without power. Nearly 4 million people in Japan were still advised to evacuate as of Monday afternoon.
The storm by late Monday was expected to reach North Korea’s northeastern region, which was battered by Typhoon Maysak last week, inflicting further pain on an economy ravaged by U.S.-led sanctions, border closures from the coronavirus pandemic and chronic food shortages.