SEOUL, Sept 14: More than 100 people were dead or missing on Sunday as South Korea counted the cost after the most powerful typhoon on record pulverised buildings, triggered floods, derailed trains and severed power lines.

Emergency authorities said 87 people had been killed and 28 were missing after Typhoon Maemi smashed into southern provinces late on Friday, leaving millions of people without electricity and forcing thousands more to flee.

Some 5,600 soldiers were mobilised on Sunday to help with relief work as President Roh Moo-Hyun approved a special budget of 1.5 trillion won (1.28 billion dollars) to aid recovery efforts.

Typhoon Maemi, or “cicada” in Korean, tore into southern parts of the peninsula on Friday night, packing record winds of up to 216 kph and carving a swathe of destruction before heading out to sea on Saturday.

“I’ve lived here for more than 50 years and we never imagined anything like this,” Kim Sung-tae, a city official in Masan, near the port of Pusan, told Reuters by telephone.

The death toll had risen to 87 and 28 people were missing as of Sunday night, the national disaster office said in a statement. The damage bill was estimated at 783.7 billion won ($669.8 million).

“The rescue work will continue through the night, but it seems most casualties have been reported,” said Chung Kwang-yong, an official at the disaster centre.

Rescuers dug eight bodies out of the debris of a commercial building hit by a landslide, Kim said. There had been fears some people were trapped in a karaoke bar, but Kim said no more victims were expected to be found.

Thousands of soldiers and rescue workers were searching for the missing, helping repair roads and power lines and distributing relief supplies. About 70,000 homes have been without electricity for more than 40 hours.

Up to 453 mm of rain was dumped across some areas and about 25,000 people had to be evacuated. A small number were still camped out in public buildings on Sunday night.

Typhoons often strike South Korea at this time of year. The country’s worst storm, Typhoon Sara, killed 849 people in 1959.

Two people were killed when the remains of the typhoon, downgraded to a tropical depression, passed over Japan. A fisherman was washed away by high waves and a camper was killed by a falling tree.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun toured typhoon-hit areas on Sunday, and urged government agencies to speed up rescue work, the presidential Blue House said.

The government said it would allocate 1.4 trillion won ($1.20 billion) in disaster relief. A government agency said insurance claims had reached more than 156 billion won by late Sunday afternoon.

The typhoon mauled South Korea’s main port of Pusan, one of Asia’s busiest, knocking down 1,000-ton cranes and tossing boats against each other. Exporters were likely to be affected.

Television footage showed giant container cranes twisted into pretzel shapes, a row of shredded seaside shops, overturned cars floating down streets and buckled roads and bridges.

“The typhoon landed when the tide was full, causing even bigger damage,” fisherman Choi Myong-sun told local television.

More than 17,000 hectares (42,000 acres) of farm land was flooded, just ahead of the harvest season, which could send rice prices soaring.

The disaster office said most of the deaths were the result of electrocution, landslides and drowning. The capital, Seoul, in the north of the country, was unaffected.

The storm also halted operations at four nuclear power plants, cutting electricity to 1.4 million homes, as the country celebrated the three-day Thanksgiving festival of Chusok.

The world’s largest shipbuilder, Hyundai Heavy Industries Co, said giant waves threw a 200,000-ton offshore storage facility, under construction for ExxonMobil Corp, into a 37,000-tonne petrochemicals carrier being built by Hyundai Mipo Dockyard for a German firm. Both were damaged.—AFP/Reuters