POWERFUL typhoon Haishen approached South Korea today after slamming southern Japan with record winds and heavy rains that prompted evacuation warnings for millions.

Today, initial assessments suggested the storm had done less damage than feared, though hundreds of thousands of homes were left without power across much of Japan’s southern Kyushu island.

At 7am, the typhoon was 30km from Tsushima island and was categorised as a “large” and “strong” storm, having weakened overnight, but was still packing gusts up to 216kph.

Several dozen mostly minor injuries were reported, according to national broadcaster NHK, most of them elderly people who suffered falls.

In Nagasaki’s Goto, four people were hurt after a shattered window flung glass into an evacuation centre in the early hours of today, a local fire department official told AFP.

“It was unclear if the window was smashed in by a gust of wind or something that blew into it,” he said.

Japan’s typhoon season usually runs until October and Haishen is the second powerful storm to move through the region in recent weeks.

It follows typhoon Maysak, which also hit Japan before moving into South and North Korea, where heavy damage was reported.

Kim Jong-un appeared in state media over the weekend to inspect the damage and ordered 12,000 elite members of his ruling party to help with recovery efforts.

Rough weather caused by Maysak also sank a cargo ship carrying 43 crew and 6,000 cows off Japan’s west coast, prompting a desperate rescue effort by the country’s coast guard.

Two survivors and the body of a third crew member were found before Haishen’s arrival forced the coast guard to suspend the search. – AFP, September 7, 2020.