South Korea's Disaster Relief Team Begins Intensive Search for Missing; Death Toll Exceeds 1,200

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South Korea's emergency relief team, which arrived in Nepal a week after the massive floods, officially began operations today (September 3). Having joined the rapid response team already on the ground, they are utilizing state-of-the-art equipment and rescue dogs to conduct search operations. Meanwhile, the death toll from the floods has now 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, launched full-scale search operations for the missing today.

Equipped with everything from five rescue dogs and high-resolution drones to DNA kits for identification, the team is mobilizing all available equipment to trace the missing.

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

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

In particular, 10 members out of the 44-strong relief team have joined the Ramche and Dunche areas, where six members of the initial rapid response team had been conducting overland searches.

The South Korean advance team has reportedly secured an overland route to 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 a more prolonged and intensive search in specific areas.

The search team is also reported to have secured highly significant information around the water intake weir dam.

Furthermore, the government is discussing with Nepalese authorities a plan to utilize the location data of the missing persons' mobile phones last picked up by local base stations.

By cross-referencing the last known communication locations of the missing with search data, expectations are high that the search radius can be significantly narrowed.

Korea South-East Power Co. and Doosan Enerbility, which were in charge of power plant construction, have also deployed helicopters, drones, and search dogs to look for traces of the missing persons.

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 has also risen to the 4,700 range.

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