SEOUL: South Korea was in shelter mode as Typhoon Haishen arrived on the shores of its southern peninsula on Monday.
The storm battered Japan’s southern islands but appeared to pass through without major damage or casualties. Carrying top sustained winds of up to 126 kmph, the storm was headed north from the southern city of Ulsan, after landing on a nearby shore on Monday morning, South Korea’s weather agency said.
High winds have already cut power to almost 5,000 households in the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, including the resort island of Jeju, which has reported more than 473 mm of rainfall since Saturday.
Officials have evacuated almost 1,000 people, while more than 300 flights across 10 airports, including Jeju International Airport, have been cancelled. Entries to national parks and some national train services have been suspended, the country’s safety ministry said.
Effect on Japan
In Japan, around 440,000 homes in the southwestern Kyushu region remained without power on Monday morning after the storm passed through, public broadcaster NHK reported.
It added 32 people were injured, including a woman who fell down a flight of stairs in the dark and four people who sustained cuts after the glass windows of an evacuation centre were blown in.
Almost two million people had been ordered to evacuate the region, which was still recovering from heavy rains and flooding in July that killed 83 people.
Typhoon Haishen comes just days after Typhoon Maysak smashed into the Korean Peninsula, leaving at least two dead and thousands without power. North Korea, which bore the brunt of both Maysak and Typhoon Bavi a week earlier, is also in Haishen’s trajectory with the storm expected to draw near the port city of Chongjin late Monday.