In the Sahara desert, air currents take up sand and move them around, translocating sand dunes from time to time. This is an example of wind moving sand and dust over the air. Despite how severe the winds might be, sand moves around just inside the desert in the deserts like the Sahara it doesn?t cross oceans and fly over borders. However, in East Asia that precise thing occurs. Sand and dust is carried over massive amounts of land and the sea, and influences other countries severely.

This phenomenon, in which high-speed prevailing winds carry clouds of fine, dry soil particulates, and move them to areas such as southeast China, Korea, and Japan, is called yellow dust. Yellow dust, also called as Asian dust, basically occurs during the dry seasons of spring, when dry sand and dust from the Gobi desert and the upstream of the Yellow River flies to southeastern countries via wind. This crisis is basically due to desertification in the regions near the Gobi desert and the Yellow River.

According to historical recordings, Yellow dust has affected East Asia for thousands of years. The most earliest written records indicate that Chinese dust storms have been investigated in 1150 BCE the records say that it rained dust. However, in the last decade this phenomenon has become a serious problem due to rapid deforestation of these regions and the increase of industrial pollutants from the region. Yellow dust has intensified to affect as far as the western coast of the USA across the Pacific Ocean in rare cases.

However, yellow dust leads to a variety of problems, and this led to long-term conflicts between China and nearby countries such as Korea and Japan. Due to toxic pollutants such as sulfur, soot, ash, heavy metals, and carbon dioxide, regions affected by yellow sand result in numerous citizens suffering from respiratory health problems, agricultural crops dying, and the dirty atmosphere itself.

In order to tackle this problem, South Korea and China have collaborated in reforestation measures near the Gobi Desert. However, this action did not result in any significant improvements. After that Korea and China have each worked to plant more trees in the region, but no big progress has been shown until now.