Typhoon Rusa Strikes South Korea

Date: August 31, 2002 • Location: Goheung-gun, Korea, Republic of

Typhoon Rusa made landfall in Goheung as the most powerful typhoon to hit South Korea in 43 years, killing at least 236 people.

Typhoon Rusa was a deadly and destructive typhoon that severely affected South Korea in 2002. The twenty-first tropical depression, the fifteenth named storm, and the tenth typhoon of the 2002 Pacific typhoon season, Rusa developed on August 22 from a monsoon trough in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, to the southeast of Japan. For several days, Rusa moved northwestward, eventually intensifying into a powerful typhoon. On August 26, the storm moved across the Amami Islands, where it left 20,000 people without power and caused two fatalities. The typhoon dropped torrential rainfall across Japan, peaking at 902 mm (35.5 in) in Tokushima Prefecture.