Hanjin airlifts emergency relief supplies to Nepal flood victims

Hanjin said Monday it completed the transport of emergency relief supplies for Nepal flood victims as the designated logistics partner for the "Nepal Major Flood Disaster Emergency Relief Cargo Transport Project," led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA).

The emergency shipment was organized to assist Nepali residents who lost their homes and livelihoods in record flooding. The supplies — more than 40,000 medium-weight and emergency thermal blankets drawn from KOICA's stockpile — are essential for helping survivors maintain body heat and stay alive.

The cargo was processed and staged at Hanjin's Global Distribution Center (GDC) at Incheon International Airport before being loaded onto a Korean Air nonstop flight to Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu.

The route covers roughly 4,000 kilometers and takes about seven hours by direct flight. Hanjin minimized the time from securing the goods to their arrival on the ground by combining the GDC's logistics infrastructure with Korean Air's nonstop service.

"We made every effort to transport the relief supplies quickly and safely so they could offer even a small measure of help to Nepali disaster victims suffering from a natural disaster," a Hanjin official said. "We will continue to actively contribute to humanitarian assistance efforts at the national level, drawing on Hanjin's global logistics capabilities."

Hanjin has been building expertise in global relief logistics through a series of government and KOICA assignments. The company transported earthquake relief supplies to Myanmar in May last year and handled international multimodal shipping of earthquake relief cargo to Venezuela in August this year.

Meanwhile, Hanjin continues to pursue a range of corporate social responsibility initiatives. Most recently, employees volunteered alongside ChildFund Korea at the annex of Hanjin Building in Sogong-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul, to produce audiobooks for children in multicultural families, special schools for children with disabilities, single-parent and grandparent-headed households, and pediatric wards — settings where children have little access to books or adults who can read to them.