Weeping kin receive bodies of climbers who died in Nepal

© The Associated Press

Friends are relatives carry coffins containing bodies of South Korean climbers killed over the weekend in a fierce storm on Nepal’s Gurja Himal mountain after theywere brought to the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018. The bodies were driven to the airport and were set to be flown to Seoul, South Korea's capital, later Tuesday. The bodies of five South Korean climbers are heading home amid calls to improve weather warning systems on Nepal's mountains. (AP Photo/Bikram Rai)

Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea

Relatives dressed in black funeral suits wept in grief 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 early Wednesday.

The five South Koreans and four Nepalese guides died when a storm swept the base camp on Gurja Himal on Friday night. The pristine mountain is rarely climbed, 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 meters (26,250 feet) without using supplemental oxygen.