Government Begins Full-Scale Overland Search Combined with Helicopter Operations

[Anchor]

To search for the nine South Korean nationals missing in the devastating floods in Nepal, the government response team has launched a direct overland search. In addition, two helicopters secured by the South Korean side have been deployed to conduct aerial searches.

Reporter Kwon Min-kyu has the details from Nepal.

[Reporter]

Local time yesterday morning and afternoon, two helicopters secured by South Korea were deployed consecutively to search for the missing South Korean nationals with authorization from the Nepalese authorities.

They conducted visual searches and video recordings while flying over the office building of the hydroelectric power plant construction site where the missing persons were located and the area around the intake weir dam upstream.

Prior to this, following the massive floods on the 26th, there had been three helicopter searches to find the missing South Koreans, but all of them were limited to brief aerial visual searches.

With no progress in the search for the missing persons six days into the massive floods, nine members of the government rapid response team left the South Korean Embassy in Nepal in Kathmandu local time yesterday morning and departed by overland to the hydroelectric power plant construction site where the nine South Koreans went missing.

[Rapid Response Team Member: We will do our best.]

The response team plans to move to the Ramche area, located about 2 kilometers away from the accident site, approach Dukche, which is close to the accident site, and conduct a precise search of the locations where the missing South Koreans are presumed to have been.

[Cho Hyun-moon, Head of the National 119 Rescue Headquarters under the National Fire Agency: We are departing for the site to gather search intelligence. Paying close attention to safety so that rapid search and rescue operations can be carried out...]

The distance to the dam construction site office building and the upper weir dam, where South Korean employees are presumed to have gone missing, is about 10 kilometers. Given the wide search area and roads washed away by the massive floods, considerable difficulties are expected in accessing the site and conducting the search.

The rapid response team stated that it has requested search support and permission to use drones from the Nepalese government.

(Video by Sul Chi-hwan and Kang Si-woo | Video Editing by Lee So-young | Graphics by Kim Han-gil)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.