Families urge Seoul to expand search for Koreans missing in Nepal floods

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Korean family members of those missing in the Nepal floods are calling on their president and foreign minister to step in and ensure more substantial search efforts as the disaster entered its fifth day.

“We are pleading with the foreign minister or even the Blue House to step in and ask for a search,” the family members told the JoongAng Ilbo in Kathmandu, Nepal, on Sunday.

Three Korean employees of Korea South-East Power who had been working at the Upper Trishuli-1 hydropower facility construction site went missing during flooding in Nepal on Wednesday. Some of their family members arrived in Nepal on Friday to assess the situation and joined relatives of the missing employees already living in the country.

“The response team is here, yet no one has been sent in to search the site,” the families said. “We have already lost four critical days since the response team arrived in Nepal, and nothing has been done. The government must step in." 

The response team, led by the Foreign Ministry’s representative for protecting overseas Korean and consular affairs, was dispatched to Nepal to assist in the search for the missing Koreans on Thursday.

“We met the team leader and other members on their first day here and gave them the coordinates of potential locations where the missing employees could be, along with all the relevant information,” the families said. “We also stressed that simply searching from a helicopter would not be enough and that search and rescue personnel needed to be deployed on the ground.”

The team could not deploy a helicopter on Friday or Sunday after Nepal’s military authorities denied permission. It conducted two aerial searches by helicopter on Saturday.

“We repeatedly stressed that simply looking from the air was unlikely to produce meaningful results,” the families said. “The response team also gave us no explanation of what it planned to do after the helicopter searches.”

The families particularly urged the Korean government to “use every diplomatic channel at its disposal to press the Nepali authorities to launch a ground search.”

“The response team told us that because they were here on behalf of the Korean government, the Nepali authorities would take their requests seriously,” the families said. “But so far, not a single search team has been sent in. [Our family members] were not tourists. They were here to build a power plant as part of a project between the two countries.”

Frustrated by the slow response, the families reportedly tracked down a survivor who escaped the hydropower plant site and the local police official overseeing the search in Rasuwa region. The families relayed contact information to the response team.

“There was a strong possibility that the missing people were in the mountains near the power plant where the survivor escaped,” the families said. “We pleaded with them to have the area searched at least once, but no one has been able to enter the area even now, five days after the flooding.”

The families stressed that the Korean government is the sole avenue for seeking help.

“We are not trying to blame the government. We are simply desperate for them to find our loved ones,” the families said. “We cannot make this plea directly to the Nepali government. The Korean government is the only one we can turn to for help.”

Yet their growing sense of despair was difficult to conceal.

“When the response team first arrived, we thought it was a lifeline, but now our last glimmer of hope is slowly fading,” they said.

BY BYUN MIN-CHUL [[email protected]]