By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
Seven South Koreans remain missing after the powerful magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti, foreign ministry officials said Wednesday.
"The ministry tried to confirm the safety of about 70 South Koreans there but seven of them have not been reached yet," an official said.
At least four of the seven still missing were said to have been staying at a hotel that collapsed in the quake Tuesday, he said.
The earthquake was followed by a tsunami and two powerful aftershocks of magnitudes 5.9 and 5.5.
The ministry said that there have been no South Korean casualties reported so far.
"We are making preparations to send a diplomat from a nearby country if any casualties are confirmed," the official said, asking to remain anonymous.
Haiti's presidential palace and numerous other government buildings, many hotels and the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping mission were severely damaged in the quake, according to news reports.
Communications to the island, the most impoverished in the Western hemisphere, were also cut, they said.
A diplomat working with Haiti out of the South Korean Embassy in the Dominican Republic said severed power and communication lines were slowing efforts to confirm the whereabouts of the missing South Koreans, according to Yonhap News.
"We are having difficulty trying to gather information as the communication network has gone down," Lee Eon-woo, the consul in the Dominican Republic, told Yonhap on the phone.