Doosan Chairman Leads Search for Missing Workers in Nepal

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Doosan Group Chairman Park Jeong-won (right) and Park Ji-won, vice chairman of Doosan Group and chairman of Doosan Enerbility, head to their vehicle after arriving at Tribhuvan Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, on Nov. 29 local time. Yonhap News

Doosan Group Chairman Park Jeong-won is directing search and rescue operations in Nepal after six Doosan Enerbility employees lost contact in massive flooding. The company’s on-site response team is attempting searches using private helicopters in Nepal.

Park entered Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, on the 29th along with Vice Chairman Park Ji-won, according to industry sources on the 30th. Park Ji-won also serves as chairman and chief executive of Doosan Enerbility (034020).

“I understand that rescue efforts for the employees we still cannot reach are actively underway,” Park Ji-won told reporters. “So I thought it would be better to come and oversee the rescue situation directly, and I arrived today.”

“We will work closely with the government response team so that rescue operations can be carried out as quickly as possible,” he said. “I told the families of the missing employees that the company will do everything it can.”

Earlier, in a message posted on the company’s internal bulletin board on the 27th, Chairman Park said the top priority was confirming the employees’ safety and securing their safe return. He said the company was working closely with local authorities and related agencies and checking conditions on the ground through every available channel. “We are concentrating companywide resources so that the measures needed for search, rescue and recovery can be carried out swiftly and systematically,” he said.

Nine South Koreans have been out of contact since flooding hit Nepal on the 26th, including six Doosan Enerbility employees and three from Korea South-East Power, who were working at a hydropower plant construction site in the Rasuwa district.

Park is overseeing the search and rescue effort from Kathmandu and working closely with Nepalese government officials and South Korean embassy staff. Doosan Enerbility has formed an on-site response team led by Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Jung Yeon-in to conduct search and rescue activities locally.

Korea South-East Power, which already dispatched a six-member first response team, is sending nine more staff in a second team, including acting President Cho Young-hyuk, to support the search.

The government, Doosan Enerbility and Korea South-East Power had sought to secure search helicopters and deploy them to the site, but Nepalese authorities withheld approval over concerns about further flooding, leaving the search limited in scope.

With local weather conditions improving somewhat, response teams from the government and companies including Doosan (000150) plan to put helicopters in the air and expand the search in stages.