287 missing after ferry goes down off S. Korea

As the ferry Sewol lies beneath chilly waters off South Korea’s southern coast Wednesday, rescue and fishing boats try to save passengers.
As the ferry Sewol lies beneath chilly waters off South Korea’s southern coast Wednesday, rescue and fishing boats try to save passengers.

MOKPO, South Korea - A ferry carrying 475 people, mostly high school students on an overnight trip to a tourist island, sank off South Korea’s southern coast on Wednesday, leaving 287 people missing despite a frantic, hours-long rescue by dozens of ships and helicopters. At least nine were confirmed dead.

photo

AP

A relative of a missing passenger on the capsized ferry Sewol waits Wednesday at the port in Jindo, South Korea.

Strong currents and bad visibility hampered rescuers today in the search for those still missing more than 24 hours after the ferry sank.

Many expected the death toll will rise sharply because the missing have now spent more than a day either trapped in the ferry or exposed to the cold seawater.

Frantic parents of missing students gathered at their high school near Seoul and in Mokpo, in the south of the country, not far from where the ferry slipped beneath the surface until only the blue-tipped, forward edge of the keel was visible.

Parents, siblings and other relatives of three high school students killed in the sinking wailed and sobbed as ambulances at a hospital in Mokpo today took the students’ bodies to Ansan, the city near Seoul where the school is located. The families, who spent a mostly sleepless night at the hospital, followed the ambulances in their cars.

The family of one of the victims, 24-year-old teacher Choi Hye-jung, spoke about a young woman who loved to boast of how her students would come to her office and give her hugs. She loved teaching and her students and was excited about her first-ever school trip to Jeju Island. There were 325 students on board, headed to Jeju Island for a four-day trip.

Meanwhile, 20 divers tried to get inside the ship’s wreckage but couldn’t because of the current, the coast guard said. More than 400 rescuers searched nearby waters overnight and into this morning.

The coast guard said it found two more bodies in the sea this morning, pushing the death toll to nine. The two were believed to be men in their 30s and 20s but authorities were trying to confirm their identity, said an official from the coast guard’s press team who would not give her name because she did not have permission to speak to the media.

South Korea plans to use two cranes to pull the ferry from the water today.

It was still unknown why the ferry sank, and the coast guard was interviewing the captain and crew members.

At a news briefing, an official said the Sewol’s regular captain was on leave. The substitute piloting the ferry had 30 years of experience.

Oh Yong-seok, a 58-year-old crew member who escaped with about a dozen others including the captain, said that rescue efforts were hampered by the ferry’s severe tilt. “We couldn’t even move one step.The slope was too big,” Oh said.

“I am really sorry and deeply ashamed,” a man identified by broadcaster YTN and Yonhap news agency as the captain, 60-year-old Lee Joon-seok, said in brief comments shown on TV, his face covered with a gray hoodie. “I don’t know what to say.”

The Sewol, a 480-foot vessel that can hold more than 900 people, set sail Tuesday from Incheon, in northwestern South Korea, on an overnight, 14-hour journey to the tourist island of Jeju.

The ship’s departure was delayed by two hours because of heavy fog off the west coast of South Korea, officials said. The ship was also carrying 150 cars and trucks, below the capacity of 180.

About 9 a.m. Wednesday, when it was three hours from Jeju, the ferry sent a distress call after it began listing to one side, according to the Ministry of Security and Public Administration.

Passenger Kim Seong-mok told broadcaster YTN that after having breakfast, he felt the ferry tilt and then heard it crash into something. He said an announcement told passengers to not move from their places and that he never heard another about evacuating.

He said he was certain that many people were trapped inside the ferry as water rushed in and the severe tilt of the vessel kept them from reaching the exits.

In a text message shown on one station’s broadcast, a student had written: “Dad, I can’t walk out because the ship is tilted too much, and I don’t see anyone in the corridor.”

Local news media quoted rescued passengers as saying that people in the ferry’s cafeteria and game room, below the main passenger decks, might not have escaped.

Koo Bon-hee, a 36-yearold businessman, complained about the crew members’ efforts during the initial stages of the disaster, saying early misjudgments may account for the large number of missing.

In addition to the order not to evacuate immediately, Koo said, many people were trapped inside by windows that were too hard to break.

“The rescue wasn’t done well. We were wearing life jackets. We had time,” Koo, who was on a business trip to Jeju with a co-worker, said from a hospital bed in Mokpo, the nearest major city to the site of the accident, where he was treated for minor injuries. “If people had jumped into the water … they could have been rescued. But we were told not to go out.”

“We cannot give up,” said South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Wednesday, after a briefing in Seoul. “We have to do our best to rescue even one passenger.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. and its 7th Fleet stood ready to assist, including the USS Bonhomme Richard, which was in the region.

The last major ferry disaster in South Korea was in 1993, when 292 people were killed.

TV stations broadcast live pictures Wednesday of the listing Sewol as passengers clambered over the side, jumped into the sea or were hoisted up by helicopters. At least 87 vessels and 18 aircraft swarmed around the stricken ferry.

The water temperature in the area was about 54 degrees Fahrenheit, cold enough to cause signs of hypothermia after about 1½ hours of exposure, according to an emergency official who spoke on condition of anonymity because department rules did not allow talking to the media.

Lee Gyeong-og, a vice minister for the Public Administration and Security Ministry, said the ocean was 121 feet deep in the area.

The survivors - wet, stunned and many without shoes - were taken to nearby Jindo Island, where medical teams wrapped them in pink blankets and checked for injuries before taking them to a cavernous gymnasium.

As the search dragged on, families of the missing gathered at a nearby dock, some crying and holding each other. Boats circled the sunken ferry into the night, illuminated by red flares.

Angry shouts could be heard when Prime Minister Chung Hong-won visited a shelter where relatives of the missing passengers waited for news. Some yelled that the government should have sent more divers to search the wreckage.

Kang Byung-kyu, a government minister, said 55 people were injured. Coast guard officials put the number of survivors early today at 179.

The Sewol, which traveled twice a week between Incheon and Jeju, was built in Japan in 1994 and could carry a maximum of 921 people, 180 vehicles and 152 shipping containers, according to the Yonhap news agency.

One theory put forward about the cause of the accident was that it hit a submerged rock.

During a brief news conference, Kim Young-bung, an executive at the Cheonghaejin Marine Co., which operated the ship, offered the company’s “deepest apology” but little detail on what might have caused the ferry to sink.

‘I THINK I’M GOING TO DIE’

Park Ji Yoon hadn’t wanted to go on her high school’s trip to the resort island of Jeju. She hated riding on ferries.

When she called the grandmother who had raised her, more than 12 hours after the ferry had departed with her and more than 300 classmates on it, the girl’s voice was shaking.

The two had spoken 90 minutes earlier, said Kim Ok Young, 74. Ji Yoon said then that the ferry hadn’t yet reached Jeju.

This call was different.

The ship was sinking, Ji Yoon said.

“Grandma, I think I’m going to die,” she said. “The ship is sinking, and I’m holding onto the rail.” Then the phone disconnected.

Waiting for news in the auditorium of Danwon High School, Kim said she reached her granddaughter one last time.

In that call, Ji Yoon said only, “I have to go,” then the phone cut off. At 10:09 a.m., she sent a text with a single Korean character, one that conveyed no meaning. Since then, nothing.

At the school, a list of names was posted on a large whiteboard. Those who were accounted for were highlighted with a colored marker. Ji Yoon’s name wasn’t.

“Two days before she was heading off on this trip, she told us that she didn’t want to go because she didn’t want to travel on a ferry,” said Kim, who had raised the girl because Ji Yoon’s parents worked. “We told her that she would regret it if she didn’t go. Now we regret it. We shouldn’t have made her go.”

Students from other schools, the same age as those missing, also crowded into the auditorium to await news. They placed post-it notes on the desks of their friends.

Danwon, a public school, was founded in 2005, meaning that many of the students had done their elementary studies elsewhere. There were 388 students in the class, almost all of them on board the ferry. The school will be closed today and Friday, its website said.

As the day drew to an end, many of the waiting parents at the school left to make the six hour bus ride to Jindo Island on buses provided by the school.

Kim, the grandmother, said Park Ji Yoon’s parents went to Jindo as soon as they heard about the ferry. They took dry clothes for their daughter.

Information for this article was contributed by Foster Klug, Youkyung Lee and Hyung-jin Kim of The Associated Press; by Choe Sang-Hun of The New York Times; by Dirk Godder of Deutsche Presse-Agentur; by Heesu Lee of Bloomberg News; and by Yoonjung Seo and Chico Harlan of The Washington Post.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/17/2014

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