Nepal flood toll reaches 1,114 — nine Koreans missing, a 44-person relief team lands September 2

The three lines

• Scale — at least 1,114 dead in Nepal, about 1,130 including China, as of September 2
• Missing — nine Koreans (six Doosan Enerbility, three Korea South-East Power) since August 26
• Response — a 44-person relief team landed in Kathmandu at 6:25 a.m. on September 2 for ten days

Key questions

How many people have died in the Nepal floods?

**At least 1,114 in Nepal as of September 2, 2026**, plus 16 deaths in China, for a regional total of roughly **1,130**. The count was 919 on August 31, so nearly 200 names were added in two days. That pattern is characteristic rather than alarming in itself: in mountain disasters, villages cut off by destroyed roads and downed communications enter the national tally days after the event, so the number climbs long after the water recedes. The physical drivers behind this flood are two Himalayan mechanisms that give almost no warning — **glacial lake outburst floods**, where a meltwater lake breaches its natural dam, and **landslide-dammed lakes**, where a slide blocks a river until the temporary lake bursts. Three of the latter were identified in this event.

Where were the nine Korean workers lost?

**At a hydroelectric power plant construction site in Rasuwa district, Bagmati province, north of Kathmandu.** Contact was lost on **August 26** when a flash flood hit the site. Six of the missing are employees of **Doosan Enerbility** and three of **Korea South-East Power**, all working on the plant project. Rasuwa is mountainous terrain near the Chinese border, hard to reach even in normal conditions; with roads washed out, simply getting rescuers to the site became the first problem. President Lee Jae-myung postponed a scheduled senior secretaries' meeting on August 27 to chair an emergency review, and an **11-member joint government rapid response team** — four from the foreign ministry, five firefighters and two police officers — was sent ahead of the main relief contingent. Searchers have used methods including mobile phone location tracing.

What did the relief team bring?

**Detection equipment rather than medical equipment, which tells you the mission's purpose.** The 44-person Korea Disaster Relief Team landed at Kathmandu at **6:25 a.m. local time on September 2** aboard a military transport, for a **ten-day** deployment. Its composition was **37 from the National Fire Agency, four from KOICA and three from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs** — an 84 percent firefighting share, because this is a search-and-rescue mission, not a medical relief operation. The cargo: **five search dogs**, high-resolution **drones** to sweep valleys that vehicles can no longer reach, **acoustic and imaging detectors** that pick up sound and voids beneath debris, **thermal imaging** equipment, and **debris-clearing** gear. How such a team is assembled and authorised is covered separately in "What Korea's Overseas Emergency Relief Team is."