SEOUL - Heart-wrenching messages of fear, love and despair, sent by high school students from a sinking South Korean ferry, added extra emotional weight Thursday to a tragedy that has stunned the nation.
Nearly 300 people - most of them students on a high school trip to a holiday island - are still missing after the ferry capsized and sank on Wednesday morning. ‘Sending this in case I may not be able to say this again. Mom, I love you,’ student Shin Young-Jin said in a text to his mother that was widely circulated in the South Korean media.
‘Oh, I love you too son,’ texted back his mother - unaware at the time that her boy was caught in a life and death struggle to escape the rapidly sinking vessel. Unlike many others, the exchange had a happy ending as Shin was one of only 179 survivors rescued before the ferry capsized and went under the water. Others were not so fortunate. Another student, 16-year-old Kim Woong-Ki, sent a desperate text for help to his elder brother as the ship listed violently over to one side.
‘My room is tilting about 45 degrees. My mobile is not working very well,’ Kim messaged. Seeking to reassure him, his brother said he was sure help was on the way. ‘So don’t panic and just do whatever you’re told to do. Then you’ll be fine,’ he messaged back. There was no further communication and Kim was listed among the 287 people on board still unaccounted for. Sadly his brother’s advice was similar to that of the crew, who controversially ordered passengers to stay put when the ship first foundered.
Angry relatives said this resulted in the passengers getting trapped when the ferry keeled over, cutting off routes of escape. That grim scenario was encapsulated in the texts of an 18-year-old student, identified in the local media by her surname Shin.
‘Dad, don’t worry. I’m wearing a life vest and am with other girls. We’re inside the ship, still in the hallway,’ the girl messaged to her father. Her distraught father wrote back urging her to try and get out, but it was already too late.
‘Dad, I can’t. The ship is too tilted. The hallway is crowded with so many people,’ she responded in a final message. Some parents managed a last, traumatic phone call with their children as they tried to escape.
‘He told me the ship was tilted over and he couldn’t see anything,’ one mother recalled of a panicked conversation with her student son. ‘He said ‘I haven’t put on the life jacket yet’, and then the phone went dead,’ the mother told the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper.
The JoongAng Ilbo published excerpts from a chatroom conversation between several students on the ferry. ‘Hey guys, let’s make sure we meet up alive,’ messaged one. ‘I love you all,’ responded another. It was not clear if the students were among those rescued.
Moreover, emotions boiled over Thursday in the frantic search for almost 300 people — mostly schoolchildren — missing from a capsized South Korean ferry, with angry parents confronting President Park Geun-Hye as prospects dwindled of finding survivors.
Worsening weather fuelled the sombre mood, with persistent rain and choppy seas hindering dive teams already struggling with low visibility and strong currents. Twenty-five people were confirmed dead, the coastguard said late Thursday, as rescuers battled high waves and recovered more bodies.
But with every hour that passed fears mounted for the 271 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. ‘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 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 Prime Minister Chung Hong-Won visited the gymnasium 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. 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.
It was still unclear what caused the 6,825-tonne Sewol to sink. Numerous passengers spoke of a loud thud and the vessel coming to an abrupt, shuddering halt — suggesting it had run aground or hit a submerged object. But the captain, Lee Joon-Seok, who survived and was being questioned by investigators, insisted it had not hit any rocks. Pulling a hood over his head and face as he was surrounded by camera crews in the coastguard offices, Lee mumbled an apology. ‘I feel really sorry for the passengers, victims and families,’ he said.
Other experts suggested the ferry cargo, which included 150 cars, might have suddenly shifted, irretrievably destabilising the vessel. Distressing mobile phone footage taken by one survivor showed the panic on board with one woman desperately screaming ‘The water’s coming, the water’s coming!’ There was growing public anger over multiple survivor testimony that passengers had been ordered to stay in their seats and cabins when the ferry first foundered. ‘We must have waited 30 to 40 minutes after the crew told us to stay put,’ said one rescued student.
‘Then everything tilted over and everyone started screaming and scrambling to get out,’ he said. Rescuers said they feared hundreds had been unable to escape the vessel because of the speed with which it turned over. Regional coastguard commander Kim Soo-Hyun told a press briefing that ‘investigations were under way’ into reports that the captain and crew were among the first to leave the stricken vessel.
Among the confirmed dead were three students, one teacher and a crew member. Three foreigners — one Russian and two Chinese — were listed among the missing. The strength of the currents faced by the divers was underlined by the fact that the ship had drifted several kilometres (miles) since going down. Chung Dong-Nam, the head of one civilian diving team at the site, said three of his men had to be rescued after being swept out to sea. ‘We’ve tried repeatedly to get into the ship but the waves and currents are too powerful,’ Chung told the YTN news channel. ‘These men are risking their lives,’ he added.