LALITPUR - A total of 165 Nepali workers have departed for South Korea under the Employment Permit System.

The workers left in groups between Aug. 9 and Aug. 11, according to departure lists published by Nepal’s EPS Korea Section. The first group comprised 26 manufacturing workers listed for Aug. 9, followed by 39 workers on the EPS agriculture departure list on Aug. 10 and another 100 workers on Aug. 11.

Manufacturing accounted for most of the departures, with 125 workers travelling to South Korea. Another 40 were on the EPS agriculture departure list. The official agriculture list contains 39 workers with an Aug. 10 departure date and one with an Aug. 11 date. The revised Aug. 11 manufacturing list contains 99 workers.

The workers travelled through the EPS, the government-to-government system used to recruit Nepali workers for employment in South Korea. Nepal and South Korea signed their ministerial-level EPS agreement on July 23, 2007, followed by an implementation agreement on Nov. 29 that year and a service commitment agreement on Jan. 10, 2008, according to the EPS Korea Section.

More departures are already scheduled. The EPS Korea Section published a new departure notice on Aug. 10 covering another 77 regular manufacturing workers: 32 listed to travel on Aug. 17 and 45 on Aug. 18.

The departures come during Nepal’s 2026 EPS-TOPIK selection cycle for workers seeking employment in South Korea. The first-phase 2026 EPS-TOPIK notice sets an estimated 7,200 successful candidates across four sectors: 5,000 in manufacturing, 2,000 in agriculture and livestock, and 100 each in service and forestry.

The next official departure lists cover Aug. 17 and 18.