Powerful Typhoon Maysak on Thursday flooded homes and vehicles and knocked down trees and utility poles on South Korea’s southern and eastern coasts.
Maysak — a Cambodian word for a type of tree — made landfall near Busan on the southern coast, packing gusts of up to 140 kilometers per hour, knocking down traffic lights and trees and flooding streets.
South Korea’s Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters says the typhoon is being blamed for at least two deaths in Busan. They report a woman in her 60s and a man in his 50s, each died after being injured by glass from broken windows.
More than 2,200 people were reportedly evacuated to temporary shelters and around 120,000 homes were left without power across southern parts of the peninsula and on Jeju Island.
The storm later made its way northward into the Sea of Japan, known as the East Sea in Korea, before making a second landfall at Kimchaek in North Korea.
The French news agency reports the typhoon brought heavy downpours across the North, with rainfall Thursday reaching 385 millimeters in the port town of Wonsan on its east coast.
Pyongyang's state media have been carrying live broadcasts on the situation, with one showing a reporter standing in a street inundated with water in Wonsan.
The storm was also blamed for the sinking of a cattle ship, which capsized and sank in the East China sea Wednesday. One of the 43 crewmen on board was rescued. The ship was also carrying nearly 6,000 cattle, bound for China.
Maysak is the fourth typhoon to hit the Korean Peninsula this year and the second in less than a month. Typhoon Haishen is expected to reach the Korean coast on Monday after passing near parts of southern Japan.
