Typhoon Lingling kills 8 in Korean peninsula

Pyongyang, Sep 8 (IANS) Typhoon Lingling that hit the Korean peninsula on Saturday claimed eight lives and damaged around 460 homes, authorities said here on Sunday.

Of this, five people died in North Korea and three in South Korea, the BBC reported.

In South Korea, hundreds of flights were cancelled and outages hit around 160,000 homes. But KEPCO, South Korean state power company, reported that power was restored to 99 per cent of them by early Sunday.

According to authorities, a woman in her 70s died in Boryeong town after being knocked down by winds blowing at 140 km per hour, Efe news reported.

In Incheon, west of Seoul, a man died in a wall collapse, and in Paju, north of the capital, another person was killed when he was struck by the panel of a roof that dislodged in the wind.

In North Korea too, flights were cancelled and tens of thousands of homes were left without power. It is likely to worsen the existing severe food shortages. The storm flooded 460 sq km (178 sq miles) of farmland, as per North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Earlier this year, the UN had said up to 10 million North Koreans were "in urgent need of food assistance". The government was giving "primary attention" to protection of crops as well as dams and reservoirs, KCNA said.

The Japan Meteorological Agency showed the storm weakening considerably on Sunday as it continued overland into China. Lingling was the most powerful typhoon to hit the Korean Peninsula since Bolaven, which in 2012 left 15 dead in South Korea and caused over $500 million damages.