MOKPO, South Korea — Strong currents and bad visibility hampered rescuers Thursday in the search for 287 passengers missing more than 24 hours after their ferry flipped onto its side and filled with cold water off the southern coast of South Korea.
Nine were confirmed dead. Many expect that number will rise sharply because the missing have now spent more than a day either trapped in the ferry or in the cold seawater.
There were 475 people aboard — most of them high school students — and frantic parents have gathered at their school near Seoul and in Mokpo, in the south of the country, not far from where the ferry slipped beneath the surface.
Dozens were injured. Coast guard officials put the number of survivors early Thursday at 179.
Parents, siblings and other relatives of three high school students killed in the sinking wailed and sobbed as ambulances at a hospital in Mokpo took the students’ bodies to the city near Seoul, where their high school is located.
The family of one of the victims, 24-year-old teacher Choi Hye-jung, spoke about a young woman who loved to boast how her students would come to her office and give her hugs. She loved teaching and loved her students and was excited about her first-ever school trip to the tourist island of Jeju.
There were 325 students on board, headed to Jeju for a four-day trip.
“She was very active and wanted to be a good leader,” said her father, Choi Jae-kyu, 53, at Mokpo Jung-Ang Hospital while waiting for the arrival of his daughter’s body. Choi’s mother, sitting on a bench at the hospital, sobbed with her head bent down on her knee.
Meanwhile, 20 divers tried to get inside the wreckage but couldn’t because of the current, the coast guard said. More than 400 rescuers searched nearby waters overnight and into Thursday morning.
It was unknown why the ferry sank, but coast guard officials were interviewing the captain and crew. 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 Jeju.
The ferry was three hours from its destination when it 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.
Koo Bon-hee, 36, said that many people were trapped inside by windows that were too hard to break.
“The rescue wasn’t done well,” Koo said. “We were wearing life jackets. We had time.”
Oh Yong-seok, a 58-year-old crew member who escaped with about a dozen others, including the captain, told AP that rescue efforts were hampered by the ferry’s severe tilt.
