S. Korea's rapid-response team finds no trace of 9 missing nationals in Nepal floods

South Korea's joint rapid-response team searching for nine South Korean nationals missing in Nepal's devastating floods has made no meaningful progress, officials said. The team plans to join a Korea Disaster Relief Team dispatched by the South Korean government to support relief operations in the affected areas.

A rapid-response team official told Yonhap on Tuesday (local time) that joint search operations with the Nepalese military, centered on the Dunche area about 2 kilometers from the weir dam where one of the missing workers had been stationed, yielded no significant results. The team also conducted drone searches, the official said, adding those efforts had likewise produced no clear findings.

Earlier that morning, the rapid-response team joined Nepalese military forces in a joint search of flood-hit areas, including the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower plant where all nine missing South Koreans had worked. The team conducted an aerial search of the area aboard a Nepalese military helicopter and landed near the weir dam — the upper dam of the Upper Trishuli-1 plant — to carry out a ground search alongside Nepalese troops. No evidence pointing to the whereabouts of the missing was found.

Nine members of the team's overland search unit also pushed into an area roughly 2 kilometers from the camp and worksite where the missing workers had stayed, deploying drones and combing the surrounding terrain, but turned up no visible results.

The official said that of the nine overland search unit members stationed in Dunche, three returned to Kathmandu after completing their operations while six remained on the ground. The six staying behind will continue coordinating with Nepalese military forces and conducting searches at the site, and are expected to link up with the Korea Disaster Relief Team (KDRT) when it arrives in Kathmandu on Wednesday.

The KDRT departed South Korea at midnight Tuesday and is expected to arrive in Kathmandu at around 5:55 a.m. Wednesday, Nepal local time. The 44-member team comprises officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Fire Agency and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). After joining the rapid-response team, they plan to coordinate with Nepalese authorities and launch search-and-rescue operations focused on the area where the South Korean nationals went missing. The effort will deploy advanced equipment including high-resolution drones, acoustic and visual detectors for locating buried survivors, and thermal imaging sensors.

"The goal, for now, is to begin operations as quickly as possible once the KDRT arrives," the official said, adding that the team had already held meetings with senior Nepalese officials and conducted working-level consultations to that end.