Bodies of five South Korean mountain climbers who died in Nepal returned to grieving relatives
Team leader Kim Chang-ho in 2013 became first South Korean to summit all 14 Himalayan peaks over 8,000 metres without using supplemental oxygen
Relatives dressed in black funeral suits wept in grief on Wednesday as the bodies of five South Korean mountain climbers arrived home from Nepal where they had died in a storm last week.
The caskets covered in white sheets were carried out from a terminal in Incheon International Airport before being loaded on vehicles headed to funeral homes in Seoul, Uijeongbu and Busan.
The five South Koreans and four Nepalese guides died when a storm swept the base camp on Gurja Himal on Friday night. Due to the remote location and more bad weather, rescuers only reached the area a day later and took two days to have their bodies recovered and brought to Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.
Gurja Himal is a pristine and rarely climbed mountain, but the team’s experienced leader had been focusing on untried routes in recent years. Team leader Kim Chang-ho in 2013 became first South Korean to summit all 14 Himalayan peaks over 8,000 metres without using supplemental oxygen.
“What can a living person say to the deceased,” an emotional Lee In-jung, president of the Asia Alpine Association, said to reporters at the airport. “They will be climbing the Himalayas again [in the afterlife].”
