South Korea to send 44-member emergency rescue team to Nepal

South Korea will send a 44-member emergency rescue team to Nepal after floods and landslides left 955 people dead and 4,471 missing, according to the figures cited by the Foreign Ministry.

The deployment follows a request from the Nepalese government for assistance with search and rescue operations in affected areas. Nepal will lead the operations, while foreign teams have been accepted to provide specialist support. Chinese and Indian tunnel-rescue teams have already arrived, making South Korea the third country to send an emergency rescue team.

The Korean Disaster Relief Team will include personnel from the Foreign Ministry, the Korea International Cooperation Agency and the National Fire Agency. Development Cooperation Bureau chief Lee Gyu-ho will lead the group. The team will travel late on Sept. 1 aboard a Korean military transport aircraft, accompanied by rescue equipment and search dogs.

The team is scheduled to reach Kathmandu early on Sept. 2 local time and operate for about 10 days in coordination with Nepalese authorities. It will search for and rescue victims regardless of nationality, including South Koreans who cannot be contacted. It will also work with a rapid response team already searching for nine missing South Koreans.

South Korea first deployed the disaster relief team abroad after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. It later carried out rescue operations after the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the 2023 earthquake in Türkiye and the Canadian wildfires.