The Nepali government has decided to allow the Korea Disaster Relief Team (KDRT) to conduct a foot search in the area where nine Koreans went missing.
A member of the government joint rapid response team met with reporters in Kathmandu on the 7th local time and said, "We have secured the position of the Nepali authorities that they will cooperate so we can search in the areas that the families of the unreachable Koreans are interested in." The rapid response team set a plan to begin the search on the 8th.
Minister Cho Hyun of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was reported to have presented a map showing the area where the nine Koreans went missing during a meeting the previous day with Nepali Foreign Minister Shisir Kanal, stressing the places the families wanted searched. A member of the rapid response team explained, "The Nepali side agreed to cooperate with the search after swiftly accepting the families' requests."
Earlier, the KDRT proposed a foot search in Ramche, about 2 kilometers from the Upper Trishuli (UT)-1 hydropower plant camp where the missing Koreans had stayed, but the Nepali Army rejected it as "dangerous." The terrain from the weir dam to the powerhouse is known to be a steep mountainous area close to a 90-degree incline. The KDRT also deployed three helicopters to search the area near the upper weir dam that day but achieved no results.
As of now, 1,355 people have died in Nepal alone due to the massive flood that occurred on the 26th of last month in the upper Himalayan mountain region. Adding 43 deaths in the Tibet Autonomous Region brings the total to 1,398. The number of missing stands at 5,515, including 4,996 in Nepal and 519 in Tibet. The nine missing Koreans are six employees of Doosan Enerbility who were building the UT-1 hydropower plant and three employees of Korea South-East Power.