Korea to Send Military Transport Aircraft to Nepal Around Midnight to Carry 44 Rescue Workers and Special Equipment

[Financial News] The government has decided to send an overseas disaster relief team to Nepal by military transport aircraft on the 1st, after massive flooding left many people missing. The deployment comes six days after the floods hit on the 26th.
The relief team, which will depart around midnight, is led by Lee Kyoo-ho, director of development cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and includes 44 members from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), and the National Fire Agency (NFA). A high-resolution drone requested by Nepal the previous day, along with acoustic and video detection devices for locating trapped victims, thermal imaging equipment, water pumps, and five rescue dogs, will also be loaded onto the aircraft and sent to Nepal.
The KDRT will work on the ground for about 10 days, closely communicating and cooperating with the Nepalese government as it carries out search and rescue operations for victims, including missing South Korean nationals who have not been reached.
The KDRT is dispatched in the event of large-scale overseas disasters, drawing personnel from government ministries and related agencies to support affected countries with disaster relief, rescue operations, and medical assistance. Under the Act on Overseas Emergency Relief, the public-private Overseas Emergency Relief Council decides on the deployment. Major past deployments include the 2023 Türkiye earthquake, the 2018 Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy Dam collapse in Laos, and the April 2015 Nepal earthquake.
A Foreign Ministry official said, "This was in response to Nepal's request for the dispatch of an emergency relief team to support search and rescue operations in the affected areas."
Relief teams from China and India have already arrived at the flood-hit site in Nepal and have been carrying out rescue operations. By contrast, the joint rapid response team from the South Korean government has focused on helicopter searches. However, the helicopter operations have produced no results because Nepalese authorities repeatedly denied takeoff permission and landing proved difficult. As a result, the government rapid response team belatedly sent a ground search team to the flood-hit area the previous day.
Meanwhile, a Chinese rescue team found one body in a tunnel near the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project, which had been built by a South Korean company in Nepal. The body was discovered after a Chinese tunnel rescue team, which was part of the Nepal Army rescue effort, entered the tunnel. The identity of the recovered body has not yet been confirmed. About 300 people are believed to be trapped in the tunnel, most of them Nepalese nationals.
The Chinese specialist rescue team has been leading the search at the site, going as far as 300 meters into the tunnel and recovering the first body. Nine South Korean workers are missing from the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs told lawmakers from the Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee in a closed-door briefing at the National Assembly the previous day that search operations by South Korea and other related countries were not yet being carried out in earnest. It also said that China and India were conducting searches in some parts of the site, but only in limited sections of certain tunnels.


[email protected] Kim Kyung-soo Reporter