Government Begins Full-Scale Land Search for Missing Citizens in Nepal, Deploys Helicopters

[Anchor]

We continue with news on the massive floods in Nepal. The government response team has launched direct land searches to find nine South Korean nationals who have lost contact. The plan is to speed up the search by getting as close as possible to the missing persons' location via land routes. Additionally, two helicopters secured by the South Korean side were deployed to conduct aerial searches.

Reporting from Nepal, this is Kwon Min-kyu.

[Reporter]

Local time this morning and afternoon, two helicopters secured by South Korea were deployed consecutively to search for the missing South Koreans, following authorization from Nepalese authorities.

They conducted visual searches and took video footage while flying over the office building at the hydroelectric power plant construction site where the missing persons were staying, as well as the upper intake weir dam.

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 inspections.

With no progress in the search for the missing persons six days into the massive floods, a nine-member government rapid response team departed from the South Korean Embassy in Kathmandu this morning, local time, heading by land 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 travel to the Ramche area, located about 2 kilometers away from the accident site today, and approach Dunche, which is close to the accident site tomorrow, to conduct a precision search of the areas where the missing South Koreans are presumed to have been.

[Cho Hyun-moon, Head of the National 119 Rescue Headquarters of the National Fire Agency: We are departing for the site to gather search intelligence. While paying attention to safety, we will ensure prompt search and rescue operations...]

The distance to the dam construction site office and the upper weir dam, where the South Korean employees are presumed to have gone missing, is about 10 kilometers. Because the search area is wide and roads were washed out 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 the Nepalese government to provide search support and grant permission to use drones.

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