Seoul - A South Korean ferry that sank
nearly three years ago, killing 304 people, most of them
children on a school trip, slowly emerged from a grey sea on
Thursday, a sombre reminder of a tragedy that traumatised the
country.
The ferry, the Sewol, was structurally unsound, overloaded
and travelling too fast on a turn when it capsized and sank
during a routine voyage off the southwest coast on April 16,
2014.
Bereaved families have been calling for the ship to be
raised and for a more thorough investigation into the disaster.
Officials also hope to find the last nine missing bodies.
"We can't help but feel stunned seeing the ship being
raised," Lee Kum-hee, whose daughter Cho Eun-hwa was one of the
nine, told reporters.
In this photo provided by Ansan City Hall, a relative of victims of the sunken Sewol ferry watches the salvage work under way in waters off Jindo, South Korea. Picture: Ansan City Hall via AP
"My Eun-hwa has been in that dirty place. My poor Eun-hwa.
It's been heart-breaking, how cold she's been there," Lee said
in tears.
Salvagers started to bring up the vessel, which has been
lying on its side at a depth of 44 metres (144 feet), late on
Wednesday, and worked through the night.
Television pictures taken from the air early on Thursday
showed the white 140-metre (460-foot) long hull, coated in mud
and sediment, breaking above the surface, flanked by winching
barges.
"The work needs to be done very cautiously," Lee Cheol-jo,
an official at the Ministry of Ocean and Fisheries, which is in
charge of the operation, told a briefing.
A Chinese salvage company has fitted 33 beams beneath the
hull with 66 hydraulic jacks inching the ship up.
Salvage workers in orange overalls and white hard-hats
clambers over the hull fixing cables. The name Sewol could just
be made out through the grime.
Lee said the ferry would be raised as high as 13 metres (42
feet) above the sea and then moved onto a semi-submersible
vessel. That operation was expected to take until Friday and it
would then be taken to a nearby port, but that could take up to
12 or 13 days, he said.
Once the sunken ferry had been secured on the
semi-submersible vessel, bereaved families would be allowed to
observe from a closer distance, another official said.
Only when the ferry has been brought to port will it be
inspected, media reported.
A submersible vessel attempts to salvage the sunken Sewol ferry in waters off Jindo, South Korea. Picture: Kim Hyun-tae/Yonhap via AP
Of those killed, 250 were teenagers from the same
high-school, many of whom obeyed crew instructions to remain in
their cabins even as crew members were escaping the sinking
ship.
The botched rescue and toll of children in one of Asia's
most technically advanced economies shocked and angered the
country, with former President Park Geun-hye and her
administration the focus of much of the ire at the time.
Park denied accusations that she failed to act decisively
but for many South Korans, she has never fully explained what
she was doing during the seven hours between the first news
reports and her first television appearance that day.
Her response to the disaster was again raised in recent
months after she came under suspicion in the course of an
investigation into a corruption scandal that led to her
dismissal from office on March 10.
The captain of the ferry was found guilty of homicide in
2015 and jailed for life. More than a dozen other crew members
got shorter sentences.
The salvage is costing about 85 billion won ($75 million),
another ministry official said this week.