Typhoon Haishen threatens Korea after battering Japan

South Korea hunkered down as Typhoon Haishen rolled northwards along the country’s east coast on Monday, a day after the powerful storm battered Japan’s southern islands, where four people are missing following a landslide.

The storm, packing sustained winds of up to 112-km per hour, temporarily cut power to more than 75,000 households and displaced some 3,100 people in South Korea after making landfall on the southeastern tip of the peninsula, according to the safety ministry.At least two people died, two more were missing and five others were injured, mostly in southern regions hit by flooding, the ministry said.

The wild weather uprooted trees and caused landslides near apartment buildings on Geoje Island, off the southeastern tip of the peninsula, local media footage and photos showed.Two nuclear reactors in the city of Gyeongju, around 375-km southeast of Seoul were shut down, according to Yonhap news agency. More than 340 flights and 114 shipping routes around the country were canceled, while nearly 6,000 schools switched to remote learning or cut class hours.

Entry to national parks and some national train services have been suspended, the ministry said.But the weather agency eased safety warnings later in the day as the typhoon moved off toward North Korea. President Moon Jae-in expressed concerns about potential further damage to some regions already pummeled by earlier typhoons, requesting a quick on-site survey so that hard-hit areas could be designated as special disaster zones and receive extra aid.

In Japan, the Kyodo news agency reported that four people were missing and more than 50 people were injured in the wake of the typhoon. The four went missing in a village in the southern prefecture of Miyazaki after a mudslide hit the office of a construction firm, Kyodo said.Among the injured were 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 center were blown in.