SOLANA MUNICIPALITY, Philippines — The villagers in the northern Philippines have lived with typhoons their whole lives, but many of them told me they weren't prepared for a storm the size of Typhoon Parma.

A farmer crosses a flooded rice paddy on the outskirts of Manila.

I am in a village in Solana, a municipality of Cagayan Province, where Parma made landfall.

We have been driving through some of the low-lying areas. On our way here, we passed downed power lines and tree branches strewn on the roads. Military personnel and local volunteers are working overtime to clear the debris. While we were filming some of the damage, a farmer walked over to tell me that the flooding got so severe that the waters rose as high as his head.

The village I am in now is a community of farmers.  Some of the rooftops on the homes here were blown off by the winds. The power was knocked out. One man told me he was terrified when the storm set in because he could hear his house rattling and the rains pelting his metal roof. The waters on some of the roads come up to our knees.

The villagers told me flooding is normal during typhoon season so many of them build a second floor on their homes. One family of rice farmers was kind enough to show me around their house. All their belongings were elevated, piled on tables, cabinets and shelves. The water was about a foot deep. This is the first time, the family told me, that the water flowed into the house. The ceiling is stained with water marks, Parma's permanent imprint on their home.

The family's home has a second floor but it failed to provide the usual shelter to the storm. The sound of Parma was so frightening, they said, that the six family members chose to huddle on small beds on the ground floor despite the rising waters. They feared the severe winds would blow off their roof, leaving them exposed to Parma's fury. They didn't have time to evacuate.

The winds and rains are gone now as Parma heads away from here. The farmers say the waters will likely take about a week to recede, and they worry about the damage to their crops. The rice plants are likely destroyed, Pinky Rhose Jesalva, a university student told me. Her family owns a tract of land nearby.

Other farmer families have laid out corn kernels alongside the road in hopes that the fermenting seeds will dry out. The Agricultural Department estimates the cost of damage from the two typhoons, Parma and Ketsana, will amount to about 120 million U.S. dollars, mainly because of devastated rice crops.

But the farmers have not given up hope. They are walking on the corn, turning the kernels over with their bare feet, in the hopes of salvaging more of their harvests.

HONG KONG, China - I called a fund manager in Seoul today to get his take on the nuclear test in North Korea.

"There was a nuclear test?" he asked me, half-jokingly.

He was at lunch where he said everyone was talking about the suicide of former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun. No word on the secretive neighbor to the North.

I know it seems unbelievable to people outside of the country, but South Koreans have grown largely immune to North Korea's threats - even a nuclear test. They have been living with the fear of North Korea for decades and have what my colleague Andrew Stevens calls "North Korea fatigue." Pyongyang's sharp rhetoric is discounted in the streets of Seoul as well as in the nation's financial markets, which after falling initially on the shock, bounced back by the end of the trading day.

South Koreans are more concerned today about the political rift that is forming as a result of Roh's death. The ex-president, known as an average Joe with integrity, killed himself in the face of a corruption scandal. His supporters blame the conservative administration of Lee Myung-bak for Roh's death, saying prosecutors went too far. Riot police have gathered in Seoul's city center in anticipation of protests.

The concern now is how Lee, nicknamed the Bulldozer, will bridge the political divide and keep the nation united at a time when the economy is fragile.