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South Korea on Tuesday was hit by heavy rain and strong winds but avoided the extensive destruction that many had feared as Typhoon Hinnamnor, one of the strongest storms ever to reach its shores, made its way out to sea faster than forecasters had expected.

By Tuesday afternoon, only one death had been reported, in the southern city of Pohang, where the worst flooding occurred. Another person had been reported missing. Otherwise, the damage nationwide appeared to be limited. There was isolated flooding, trees were downed and street lamps broken, and about 66,000 homes lost power.

Cheong Tae Sung, an expert in flooding at the National Disaster Management Research Institute, a government agency, said the deadly floods that struck South Korea last month had made both the public and the authorities more attuned to the dangers of a major storm.

“Compared to the past, we did a lot more preparation before this typhoon, suspending schools, delaying the work day, closing roads — and simply getting the word out,” he said.

But the storm itself, while powerful, did not leave as much damage as had been feared. When its eye reached the southern coast at 4:50 a.m., Hinnamnor was packing maximum sustained winds of 89 miles per hour — making it the eighth-strongest typhoon in South Korea’s history, by that measure, but not the most powerful ever to reach it.

And it crossed the country’s southeast corner faster than expected, slipping back out to sea by 7:10 a.m., inflicting its severe wind and rain on the country for a shorter period of time than forecasters had feared it might.

By late afternoon, Hinnamnor was about 270 miles off South Korea’s east coast and continuing northeast. It was expected to pass about 240 miles northwest of Sapporo, Japan, at about 9 p.m. on Tuesday, the Korean meteorological service said.

The record-breaking deluge that struck South Korea a month ago killed 15 people across the country, including a family of three who drowned in their semi-underground apartment. President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was criticized for his response, promised measures to prevent a recurrence. As Hinnamnor neared, the government put a stronger emphasis on the need to evacuate. It sent out 412 typhoon-related mobile safety alerts, including evacuation orders, in different regions over a five-day period.

More than 14,000 people left their homes under government orders to evacuate high-risk areas, the authorities said. After the typhoon made landfall, about 3,500 additional people evacuated, according to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. Over the weekend, the government issued its most urgent typhoon warning, the highest-level alert it had sent in five years.

Map: Tracking Typhoon Hinnamnor

Map showing the expected path of Typhoon Hinnamnor.

Forecasters had warned that Hinnamnor’s force might be comparable to that of two devastating typhoons from two decades ago, Rusa and Maemi. In 2002, Typhoon Rusa swept across South Korea, leaving dozens dead and destroying more than a million homes. The following year, Typhoon Maemi killed more than 100 people and caused $1.6 billion in damage.

The terms typhoon and hurricane refer to tropical cyclones and are applied to storms depending on where they originate. Typhoons develop in the northwestern Pacific and usually affect Asia. Hurricanes form in the North Atlantic, the northeastern Pacific, the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico.

In the Atlantic, major hurricanes are defined as tropical cyclones with maximum sustained winds of 111 m.p.h. or higher, and defined as either Category 3, 4 and 5 storms. But in the Asia Pacific region, there are variations in how countries grade typhoons.

The links between tropical storms and climate change are becoming more apparent. Researchers have found that warming has increased the frequency of major storms because a warmer ocean provides more of the energy that fuels them.