A response team from Korea South-East Power searches for employees who lost contact after severe flooding in the Rasuwa area of Nepal on Thursday (local time), with two search dogs and local personnel. [Yonhap]
A response team from Korea South-East Power searches for employees who lost contact after severe flooding in the Rasuwa area of Nepal on Thursday (local time), with two search dogs and local personnel. [Yonhap]

South Korea's Korea Disaster Relief Team (KDRT), dispatched at Nepal's request and arriving in the country Thursday, attempted an aerial search Thursday with two Nepali military helicopters over the area where nine South Koreans went missing, but turned back due to poor weather.

The team secured the two helicopters after meeting with a Nepali military commander in the Bataar area of Nuwakot, Bagmati Province in north-central Nepal, where the KDRT has set up its base camp. The search attempt was abandoned shortly after it began, as rain and strong winds made conditions unworkable.

"We tried to enter the search area by helicopter, but visibility was under one meter, so we turned back," a KDRT official told Yonhap. The team plans to send the same two helicopters back to search the same area Saturday, the official added. The KDRT also plans to work with Nepali authorities to develop a longer-term search plan.

Doosan Enerbility, one of the contractors at the Upper Trishuli (UT)-1 hydropower plant construction site where the nine missing South Koreans worked, also deployed a helicopter Thursday to search from the plant's main camp downstream along the river. Previous searches had focused on the office building and upper weir dam where the missing workers were last known to be, but with no meaningful results, the company expanded the search area to cover the downstream river zone.

Korea South-East Power also deployed six drones and two search dogs at the site Thursday to continue the search. The fate of the missing workers remains unknown.


kate01@heraldcorp.com