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🇰🇷 South Korea /Culture & Society

Nepali father searching for missing son says discrimination has blocked his way

From Dong-A Ilbo · () Korean

Translated from Korean and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

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  • Talka Sada travelled from southern Nepal to search for his 19-year-old son, who disappeared with four co-workers during a sudden flood near a hydropower construction site.
  • After searching a Kathmandu morgue, Sada headed toward the worksite but ran out of money and said officials and military camps repeatedly turned him away.
  • Authorities cited the scale of the disaster, difficult terrain and communications outages, while advocates called for dedicated support for families facing language, income and documentation barriers.

With his heels blistered and only 2,000 Nepalese rupees borrowed at 20 percent interest, Talka Sada travelled from Nepal’s southern Saptari district to the flood-ravaged mountains in search of his missing son.

I cannot put into words how much my wife is crying out. I am also in deep pain and do not know what to do.

· Talka SadaSada described his family’s anguish after his son disappeared in the flood.

Sada’s 19-year-old only child, Binod, disappeared with four co-workers when the sudden Bhote Koshi River flood swept through a hydropower construction site in Rasuwa on August 26. Sada travelled nine hours by bus over 292 kilometres to Kathmandu and searched the morgue, but he could not identify his son among badly damaged bodies. He then set out toward the power station, walking in the direction of Nuwakot.

His remaining money disappeared at a stop in Trishuli, where he paid 1,500 rupees for a meal and a night’s lodging. Sada said the greater obstacle, however, was discrimination. As a member of the Musahar community, a severely poor marginalized group in Nepal’s southern border region with India, he said government offices and military camps repeatedly refused him help.

We are being pushed away and made to make pointless trips because we are poor and our Nepali is not good. Even if it is a body, we have the right to see it, but no one is helping us.

· Talka SadaHe said poverty, language difficulties and discrimination prevented him from receiving assistance.

“We are being pushed away and made to make pointless trips because we are poor and our Nepali is not good. Even if it is a body, we have the right to see it, but no one is helping us,” he said. Sada repeatedly called his son’s disconnected phone number, alternating between hope that Binod had survived and despair that he had not called.

My son is agile, so he must have escaped somewhere and survived.

· Talka SadaSada expressed hope that his missing son was still alive.

With no money left even for the journey home, Sada said he might burn down a police station if no one answered or helped him. He then repaired his old backpack and continued along the collapsed dirt road. Nepalese authorities said the scale of the disaster, rugged terrain and communications outages made it difficult to respond immediately to every missing person’s family. Calls have grown for dedicated channels and transport assistance so that language, poverty and missing identity documents do not exclude families from registration, body identification or guidance.

If no one gives an answer or helps us, I will have no choice but to burn down the police station.

· Talka SadaHe made the threat after running out of money and receiving no clear response about his son.
About this summary

Originally published by Dong-A Ilbo in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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