TOKYO/SEOUL: Heavy snowfall caused havoc in many parts of Japan and South Korea yesterday, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity, disrupting traffic and even forcing nuclear power plants to shut down.

In Japan, one truck driver died and hundreds of people were injured yesterday as a record snowfall hit the country's western and central regions, officials said. At least 532 people were injured across the nation, mostly minor injuries from tripping on snow-covered grounds, public broadcaster NHK said.

As of yesterday, 231 centimetres of snow has fallen in the town of Tsunan in Niigata, and 216 centimetres has fallen on Shirakawa Town in central Gifu prefecture, said Kenji Kobayashi, a researcher for the Meteorological Agency. The snow levels have surpassed records in those regions.

Train services in Niigata, about 250 kilometres northwest of Tokyo, were suspended due to power outages, according to Junpei Yamauchi, a JR East Japan spokesman.

All local and express services as well as some bullet train services in the area were halted, while some night trains linking cities on the west coast were to be cancelled, Yamauchi said.

Central Japan International Airport in Aichi prefecture kept its only runway closed until Thursday afternoon because of the snow, said airport spokesman Mitsuoki Hikota.

Fourteen international and 104 domestic flights have been cancelled, and eight international flights have been diverted to other airports, Hikota said.

Some 650,000 households had power outages in Japan's north-central prefecture of Niigata due to a blizzard, and one-third of them were still out of electricity late yesterday, said Tohoku Electric Power Co spokesman Yosuke Marunouchi.

Kansai Electric Power Co said that about 700,000 households in western Japan were without power for about 40 minutes yesterday morning after two power generators at its nuclear power station in Fukui prefecture shut down.

Masaki Todatake, a spokesman for the Osaka-based power company, said heavy snow may have caused the generators to shut down automatically. Power had been restored, and the company was investigating.

In South Korea, snow in the southern and southwestern areas claimed at least one life, stranded thousands of motorists and damaged hundreds of greenhouses, local media reported.

Several thousand South Korean troops have been deployed to clear highways and remove snow from the roofs of structures to prevent their collapse, the reports said.

South Korean officials said damage has been estimated at about US$150 million.

About 40-50 centimetres of snow have fallen in the past day in parts of the region.

Source: China Daily