While we know them as Hurricanes in the Atlantic, Huge storms in the Pacific are known as 'Typhoons' even though they are virtually the same thing as Hurricanes. Typhoons in the Pacific normally impact the Philippines more than any other country in the Pacific, with Japan and China right behind them (China in particular has a nasty history with typhoons due to their population and historical poverty). For the first time though, North Korea is now on the list as a country at risk.
Typhoon Lingling (I swear to God thats the actual name of the storm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Pacific_typhoon_season#Typhoon_Lingling_(Liwayway) Known in the Philippines as Typhoon Liwayway, at one point was a Category 4 storm when it swept through the southern most islands of Japan before it continued northwards. It gradually weakened as it skirted around the coast of China, but it made landfall in North Korea sometime two days ago with maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour.
Category 1 hurricanes average wind speeds between 74 and 90 miles per hour
While the storm pushed 122 miles per hour in wind speed while slashing South Korea, resulting in three deaths, the storm eventually made its way further north right over Pyongyang before crossing into Russia and eventually weakened into a tropical depression.
Now im willing to bet that North Korea's shitty infrastructure and government handling of just about everything made it that the country is woefully unprepared to handle the effects of even the lowest tier of major storms. Short of an outbreak of a war itself, hurricane strikes like these may very well bring the country to its knees more then sanctions ever could. Unlike poorer states such as Haiti, Puerto Rico, or the Bahamas, North Korea likely wont be able to get the same sort of financial outreach from sympathetic nations to recover from heavy storms that strike the nation, so the storm and future storms that take aim at North Korea could have profound geopolitical implications for North Korea and the current security situation in East Asia.
(Anyone who wants to make a troll debate\claiming that global warming is good can also use this as an example for why its good, since it arguably makes hurricanes strike North Korea)
