An official with the embassy of the Republic of Korea (ROK) in China confirmed that a 47-member ROK rescue team had arrived on Saturday morning in Shifang city, one of the worst-hit areas in the quake-stricken southwestern Sichuan Province.

"The team has already started search work on debris of a chemical factory and found four dead bodies, Pitifully, they had found no survivor yet", the official said in Beijing Saturday via a phone interview with Xinhua.

The ROK team is composed of rescue professionals from the country's fire departments, equipped with two search dogs and advanced electronic detection devices, the official added.

(Xinhua News Agency May 17, 2008)