Ferry trap drownings described

Diver in tears as he finds boy and girl with life jackets tied together

ABOY and girl trapped in a sinking South Korean ferry with hundreds of other high school pupils tied their life jacket cords together, presumably so they would not float apart, a diver who recovered their bodies said yesterday.

The diver had to separate the two because he could not carry two corpses up to the surface at the same time.

“I started to cry thinking that they didn’t want to leave each other,” he said.

The parents of the boy whose shaking voice first raised the alarm that an overloaded ferry was sinking believe his body has also been found, the coastguard said.

The parents had seen his body and clothes and concluded he was their son, but he has not been formally identified.

More than 300 people, most of them pupils and teachers from the Danwon High School, are dead or missing presumed dead after the April 16 disaster. The confirmed death toll yesterday was 171.

The Sewol ferry sank on a routine trip from the port of Incheon, near Seoul, to the southern holiday island of Jeju. Investigations are focused on human error and mechanical failure.

Prosecutors said they had raided two shipping watchdogs, the Korean Shipping Association and the Korean Register of Shipping, as part of their expanded investigation into the disaster.

Yonhap news agency said they would investigate whether ship safety certificates were in order.

“The objective was to investigate malpractices and corruption in the entire shipping industry,” Song In-taek, a senior prosecutor, said.

Prosecutors have also raided the home of Yoo Byung-un, the head of a family that owns the Chonghaejin Marine Co Ltd, the company that operated the Sewol.

They had also seized another ferry run by the company to check for safety. A lawyer for the family said it would take “all legal and social responsibility for this tragic accident if they have to as major stakeholders of the company”. He did not say the family was assuming liability.

Of the 476 passengers and crew on board the Sewol, 339 were children and teachers from the school in Ansan, a gritty suburb on the outskirts of Seoul, who were on an outing to Jeju.

As the ferry began sinking, the crew told the children to stay in their cabins. Most of those who obeyed died. Many of those who flouted or did not hear the instructions and went out on deck were rescued.

Some of the bodies had their hands held tightly to try to keep warm, a newspaper said.

Classes at the school resumed yesterday with banks of flowers surrounding photos of each of the victims, dressed in their school uniforms. Almost 250 teenagers and teachers at the school have died or are presumed dead.

Fellow pupils filed past, offering white chrysanthemums in sombre tributes. Yellow ribbons, with names and messages inscribed, were tied around a chain-link fence.

In the classrooms of the missing, friends posted messages on desks, blackboards and windows in the days after disaster struck, asking for the safe return of their friends.

“If I see you again, I’ll tell you I love you, because I haven’t said it to you enough,” read one.

The school provided therapy sessions for the children as they returned.

The ship, 146m long and 22m wide, was over three times overloaded, according to official recommendations, with cargo poorly stowed and inadequate ballast.

Moon Ki-han, an executive at the firm that supervised cargo loading, said there were 105 containers onboard, some of which toppled into the sea as the ship listed. – Reuters