The Lexicographer's Rules

Whangsa is the South Korean word, meaning “yellow sand,” for spring winds which blow tons of dust and dirt from China’s and Mongolia’s Gobi Desert across Japan, the two Koreas and into the Pacific Ocean. Such dust clouds can extend to an altitude of 10,000 feet and reduce visibility to half a mile.

I guess it is North Korean, too. Or rather, just Korean.

Could be. The article specified South Korean, and I know there are accent and vocabulary differences between the North and South, so I felt it was important to make the distinction. Here are some pictures of the clouds. The page also says the dust clouds are called “Huangsha in China, Whangsa in Korea, and Kosa in Japan.” So it would appear from a superficial look at the phonetic similarities between the Chinese and Korean terms that the Korean term originated in China, and so it would be a pretty sure thing that it is also used in North Korea which, after all, abuts China, while the South does not.

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