South Korea is dispatching a 44-member Korea Disaster Relief Team (KDRT) to Nepal, which has been battered by flooding.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on the 1st that the KDRT, led by Lee Kyu-ho, director-general of the ministry's development cooperation bureau, will arrive in Nepal on the 2nd aboard a military transport aircraft. The team consists of 44 people — three from the Foreign Ministry, four from the KDRT secretariat at the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and 37 from the National Fire Agency — along with five search dogs. More than 2,000 pieces of search-and-rescue equipment were also loaded onto the aircraft. A ministry official said the shipment "includes tunnel search-and-rescue equipment requested by the Nepalese government, such as six high-resolution drones, battery-powered cutting saws and acoustic and video detectors for locating buried victims."
The KDRT is the emergency relief team the government deploys when large-scale disasters strike abroad. This marks its 12th deployment, following missions including the 2015 Nepal earthquake and the 2023 Turkey earthquake. Over the next 10 days, the team will work with the Nepalese government to search for and rescue flood victims, including nine South Korean nationals who are out of contact. The deployment could be extended depending on conditions on the ground.
South Korea is the only country other than China and India that Nepal has authorized to send an overseas emergency relief team. About 100 nationals each from China and India are reported to be missing. Nepal accepted relief teams from multiple countries after the 2015 earthquake, but the simultaneous influx caused confusion in the chain of command. As a result, the country is allowing only limited participation by foreign relief teams this time.
The KDRT is also expected to work in part with a joint government rapid response team dispatched to the flood-hit areas on the 27th. That team is currently searching for the nine missing people using helicopters, drones and ground searches.
