[Anchor]

The rapid response team has begun ground searches to find the nine South Korean nationals missing in the floods in Nepal. This morning (the 2nd), South Korea's Korea Disaster Relief Team (KDRT) will also arrive in Nepal and join the site.

Reporter Son Gijun has the story.

[Reporter]

Our rapid response team focused its search around the water intake weir dam in the upper reaches of the river, where the missing South Koreans are presumed to be.

This is a location with a high possibility of local employees being present, including one South Korean.

Multiple drones were sent into the canyons around the dam for observation,

[It is going down really far, right? We are currently at an altitude of 2,000 meters.]

Starting yesterday morning, full-scale land searches were also conducted with the assistance of the Nepalese Army.

[Jeon Gi-baek / Head of the Government Joint Rapid Response Team: The drones had quite a meaningful effect yesterday, so we are going down to check that as well....]

However, the area around the office building across from the power house—the downstream power facility where eight of the missing South Koreans were reported to be at the time of the accident—has not yet been searched.

The search is gradually expanding, starting from areas with the highest possibility of finding the missing persons, but no news regarding the missing individuals has been heard yet.

Korea South-East Power Co. (KOEN) and Doosan Enerbility are also joining the search.

KOEN deployed thermal imaging and infrared drones as well as search dogs to detect human presence, while Doosan Enerbility has been searching the site by helicopter for the second consecutive day.

Formed at the official request of the Nepalese government, the 44-member Korea Disaster Relief Team departed on a military transport plane at midnight today and will arrive in Nepal this morning.

As these relief workers are scheduled to join the site upon arrival in Nepal, the search operations are expected to gain further momentum.

(Video by: Joo Yong-jin, Kim Han-gyeol | Video Editing: Lee So-young)