Families of missing Korean workers urge Seoul to halt early Nepal search withdrawal

Families of South Korean workers missing after a flash flood in Nepal have publicly urged Seoul to stop the early withdrawal of its disaster relief team, saying the mission is ending before a substantive ground search was carried out in the areas where the workers are believed to have fled.

Speaking at a press conference in Kathmandu on Wednesday, relatives of employees of Korea South-East Power Co. (KOSEP) said the Korea Disaster Relief Team (KDRT), based in Batar, was ending its on-site search and preparing to pull out from 8:40 am that morning, citing a safety assessment by Nepali military and fire authorities. The families, who asked not to be identified for privacy reasons, said the move falls short of the 10-day mission period promised by the government.

The relatives said no proper ground search had been conducted along the evacuation routes and in the areas identified in survivor testimonies. They added that a civilian search team had already been operating for several days in the zones where the Korean workers are presumed to have evacuated, and that coordinates secured by the civilian team and the company had not yet been searched. Information on the escape paths of local Nepali staff, gathered by KOSEP and the civilian team, was passed to the government several times, they said, but the relief team had not carried out a single proper search of that area.

The families called on the government to immediately halt what they described as a unilateral and premature withdrawal, and urged the relief team to resume a final ground search of remaining blind spots in coordination with the civilian team and local military and police before leaving. They said they would document the termination of the search and hold the government accountable for what they called its duty to protect its citizens.

The flash flood struck the construction site of the UT-1 hydropower plant in the Rasuwa district of Nepal's Bagmati Province on August 26. Nine South Korean workers who were at the site remain missing.

Responding to the criticism, South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Park Doo-soon told a regular briefing in Seoul on Thursday that search operations had been carried out over 13 days, from August 27 to September 8. He said these comprised seven helicopter missions with 25 personnel covering 87.29 square kilometres, 14 drone missions with 51 personnel covering 6.51 square kilometres, nine tunnel searches with 36 personnel, and two on-foot searches with 11 personnel covering four kilometres. In total, he said, this amounted to 32 search operations, 123 personnel deployed and a search area of 93.8 square kilometres, about 21 times the area of Yeouido.

Park said the government had continued consultations with Nepali authorities since the early days of the disaster to reflect the families' requests as much as possible. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun personally visited Nepal and secured cooperation for on-foot searches in the areas the families wanted examined, he said, and as a result drone and on-foot searches were conducted there on September 8 within the limits needed to ensure personnel safety.

Park said the operation faced significant constraints from rugged mountainous terrain, unstable ground and access conditions, and unpredictable monsoon weather, and that the government had to weigh the safety of personnel. He said the government understands that the families may feel the search has not been sufficient, and that explaining the constraints was not intended to set arbitrary limits but to give an honest account of conditions on the ground. Going forward, he said, the government will continue to listen to the families' views and review necessary measures in a way that respects and reflects their wishes as much as possible.