Anger, fears grow over hundreds missing in S.Korea ferry accident

PHOTO | JUNG YEON-JE South Korean relatives of passengers on board a capsized ferry cry as they wait for news about their loved ones, at a gym in Jindo on April 17, 2014. The frantic search for nearly 300 people, most of them schoolchildren, missing after a South Korean ferry capsized extended into a second day on April 17, as distraught relatives maintained an agonising vigil on shore.

What you need to know:

  • Rescuers work frantically to find about 300 people
  • Worsening weather fuelled the sombre mood, with persistent rain and choppy seas further hindering dive teams already struggling with low visibility and strong currents.

JINDO

Rescuers worked frantically Thursday to find around 300 people — mostly schoolchildren — missing after a South Korean ferry capsized, with prospects of pulling survivors from the submerged vessel dimming as emotions boiled over among anguished relatives.

Worsening weather fuelled the sombre mood, with persistent rain and choppy seas further hindering dive teams already struggling with low visibility and strong currents.

Nine people were confirmed dead, but with every hour that passed fears mounted for the 287 still unaccounted for after the multi-deck vessel with 475 on board suddenly listed, capsized and then sank within the space of 90 minutes on Wednesday morning.

ZERO CHANCES

“Honestly, I think the chances of finding anyone alive are close to zero,” a coastguard official told an AFP journalist on one of the boats at the site.
The coastguard said more than 500 divers, 169 vessels and 29 aircraft were now involved in the rescue operation.

But distraught relatives gathered in a gymnasium on nearby Jindo island insisted more should be done, and vented their frustration when President Park Geun-Hye came to inspect the rescue effort.

“What are you doing when people are dying! Time is running out!” one woman screamed as Park tried to address the volatile crowd with her security detail standing by nervously.

A total of 375 high school students were on board, travelling with their teachers to the popular island resort of Jeju.

When South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-Won visited the gymnasium in Jindo earlier in the day, he was jostled and shouted at, and water bottles were thrown.

“Don’t run away, Mr Prime Minister!” one mother said, blocking Chung as he tried to leave. “Please tell us what you’re planning to do.”
The coastguard said 179 people had been rescued — a figure that has remained constant since the evening before, further undermining hopes of more survivors being found.

The tragedy has stunned a country whose rapid modernisation was thought to have consigned such large-scale accidents to the past.

If the missing are confirmed dead it would become one of South Korea’s worst peacetime disasters — all the more traumatic for the number of children involved.