SEOUL, July 25, 2018 (News Wires) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in ordered measures including an emergency relief team to help victims of the collapse of a dam being built by South Korean companies in Laos, his office said on Wednesday. Nineteen people have been confirmed dead and more than 3,000 need to be rescued after a dam collapsed in a remote part of land-locked Laos, local media reported on Wednesday. "The president ordered robust measures including sending an emergency relief team while looking into the cause of the accident, as our companies are participating in the dam construction," presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told a briefing. District governor Bounhom Phommasane, said about 19 people have been "found dead", more than 3,000 "require rescue" and about 2,851 have been saved. "We will continue with rescue efforts today but it's very difficult, the conditions are very difficult. Dozens of people are dead. It could be higher," the Vientiane-based official told Reuters by telephone. State media showed pictures of villagers, some with young children, stranded on the roofs of submerged houses. Others showed villagers trying to board wooden boats to safety in Attapeu province, the southernmost part of the country. At least seven villages have been submerged. State media pictures showed one-storey homes flooded with muddy water. The remoteness of the affected area could hamper relief operations, say experts. Laos, one of the world's few remaining communist states and once of Asia's poorest countries, has an ambitious dam-building scheme in order to become the "battery of Asia". Its government depends almost entirely on outside developers to build its planned portfolio of dams under commercial concessions that agree to export electricity to its more developed neighbours, including power-hungry Thailand. Environment rights groups have repeatedly warned about the human and environmental cost of the rapid pace of dam construction, including damage to the already-fragile ecosystem of the region's rivers.
