Two South Korean climbers were killed trying to scale Mount Everest, a Nepalese mountaineering official said Thursday. Hee Joon Oh, 37, and Hyun Jo Lee, 34, fell after they reached the altitude of 8,300 meters (27,200 feet) on their way to the summit on Wednesday, said chief of Nepal's Mountaineering Department, Khadananda Dhakal. Dhakal said there were not many details available, but the two climbers were part of a seven-member Korean team climbing from the southwest face of the world's highest mountain. Bodies of the climbers killed on such high altitude are usually left in place because of the difficulty in dragging them down through snowy and icy slopes at oxygen-poor high altitudes, the Associated Press reported. Some 23 climbing parties are attempting to scale the peak from the Nepalese side this season. Strong winds and heavy snow have hampered many of the parties, forcing them to stay at lower camps along the icy trail. The first teams reached the 8,850-meter (29,035-foot) summit Wednesday, and more scaled the peak on Thursday, but details were still not available. The climbing season began in March and is expected to end in late May when the annual monsoon usually brings fresh blizzards that make the climbing route too treacherous. Since New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first conquered Everest on May 29, 1953, around 2,000 climbers have scaled the mountain. Another 205 people have died on its unpredictable slopes.
