The Korean Alpine Federation and a sponsor company said Saturday that two South Korean mountaineers were killed on Friday afternoon while trying to scale the north face of Mount Cholatse in the Nepalese Himalayas.

The climber's association and sponsor K2, a sportswear brand, said the leader of the K2 Extreme Team Kim Hyeong-il and team member Jang Ji-myeong fell to their deaths on Friday afternoon while attempting to climb the six-thousand-440-meter mountain.

Two other members of the team who had remained at the base camp recovered their bodies on the same day. The base camp is four-thousand-500-meters to five thousand meters above sea level.

The two deceased climbers had postponed their assent of Mt. Cholatse to participate in the first round of search and rescue efforts to find three mountaineers, including Park Yeong-seok, who had gone missing in October while scaling Mount Annapurna.