Emergency Relief Team Begins Full-Scale Search for Missing; Death Toll Exceeds 1,200

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South Korea's emergency relief team, which arrived in Nepal one week after the massive flood, is launching full-scale rescue and relief operations today (the 3rd). They have deployed advanced search equipment and search dogs to find the missing, including nine South Korean nationals. The death toll from the floods has surpassed 1,200.

Reporter Gwak Sang-eun has the details.

[Reporter]

The South Korean government's emergency relief team, which arrived in Nepal yesterday morning, officially began searching for the missing today.

They have mobilized all available resources, including five rescue dogs, high-resolution drones, and DNA kits for identification, to trace the missing persons.

The base camp and sleeping quarters were set up in Battar, where a Nepalese military heliport is located.

This is to ensure rapid access to the search sites by helicopter.

In particular, 10 out of the 44 relief personnel joined the Ramche and Dunche regions, where a six-member rapid response team had previously been conducting searches on foot.

The South Korean advance team is reported to have secured a route by land, reaching a point just 50 meters away from the valley where the accident occurred.

Once inside the valley, they are expected to use advanced equipment such as acoustic detectors to conduct intensive, prolonged searches in specific areas.

The search team has reportedly also gathered highly significant information around the water intake weir dam.

In addition, the government is discussing with Nepalese authorities to utilize the location data of the missing persons' mobile phones last caught by local base stations.

By precisely comparing the last communication locations of the missing persons with search data, it is expected that the search area can be significantly narrowed down.

Korea South-East Power and Doosan Enerbility, the companies in charge of the power plant construction, have also deployed helicopters, drones, and search dogs to search for the missing.

As the race against time continues, the official death toll from the massive floods across Nepal and China has exceeded 1,200.

The number of missing persons still stands at approximately 4,400.

(Video by Kim Byung-jik)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.