It’s just one of those things about living next to China. It’s gross, uncomfortable, and makes you not want to go outdoors — never a good feeling. If you do go outside your throat may begin to hurt and occasionally you get a headache.

Ah, yes. I missed you dearly hwangsa.

Hwangsa is a lovely  Asian phenomenon. Basically it’s a large cloud of yellow dust containing both dust particles from the Gobi Desert and pollution sent to Korea and Japan, courtesy of China. It doesn’t normally look yellow, and if you didn’t know better, you might think it was fog. Which I like. But it clearly isn’t.

While riding a bus today I saw a scene that looked not unlike a doomsday film, people wearing face masks, others covering their mouths with hankerchiefs, stumbling down the street — essentially everyone was avoiding breathing the air outdoors. Never a pretty picutre.

The agency issues a yellow dust advisory if the hourly average dust concentration is more than 400 micrograms per cubic meter and is expected to continue for two hours. A yellow dust warning is issued if a concentration of more than 800 micrograms per cubic meter per hour is expected to continue for two hours or more.
As of 4 p.m., the dust density was measured at 1,330 micrograms per cubic meter in Gwangju and 1,292 micrograms in Chupungryeong. By 7 p.m. the density exceeded 1,000 micrograms in Daegu. In Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, the dust density stayed between 20 and 60 micrograms, according to the agency.
“The yellow dust, created in the southern Gobi desert on Friday, was very strong with the density ranging between 1,000 and 6,000 micrograms per cubic meter as it approached the Korean Peninsula,” said Yoo Hee-dong, a forecaster at the agency.

By the evening it gone for the most part.  

Schools closed as yellow dust coats S. Korea

Killer “yellow dust” covers South Korea