
Anger as families wait for victims' remains after South Korea plane crash | BBC News
BBC News- 101 views
- 30 Dec 2024
Hundreds of grieving people have been camping out at Muan International Airport in South Korea, furious that they have not yet ...
We turn our attention now to South Korea, where families are the victims of the nation's worst aviation disaster in decades are calling for more support from the government. All but two of the 181 people on board died as the Juju airplane crashed after landing at Muan International Airport in the southwest of the country. South Korea's acting President has ordered an emergency safety inspection of the country's entire aviation operations system. Our sole correspondence, Jean McKenzie, is at the scene and sent us this report.
The bereaved are at breaking point. These outbursts come every few minutes. A day on from the crash, they're still at the airport waiting to be reunited with their loved ones' bodies. Why have only five bodies been released? This woman yells, You're useless. A police official spares her no details. They're too badly damaged, he says. Forensic teams are still piecing them together. It's disturbing to hear. And for Shin-gu, In Deauhou, it's even worse. His two teenage grandsons haven't even been identified.
I've been sitting here all day hoping for news. I'm so frustrated. I feel like I'm waiting without an end.
The plane was carrying Koreans back from Christmas holidays in Thailand when it landed at speed without its wheels down. As it crashed, every passenger was killed. Investigators are now trying to work out why the landing gear seemed to fail, but the flight recorder is damaged. It'll take time to decipher the data. So today, the attention has turned to what happened on the runway.
When the plane made its emergency landing, it was still intact, but because it couldn't stop, it then overshot the runway here. And we now know that it hit this concrete and orange structure that has been raised up on this grassy mound. This is a guidance system that is supposed to help planes land, but this is the point at which the plane exploded into this fireball and fractured into many pieces. And aviation experts are now questioning why this was positioned in this way, so raised up and so close to the end of the runway.
The acting President has ordered an investigation of the country's entire aviation industry. Without answers, the families don't know who to blame. For now, the only place they can direct their anger is at the forensic teams who are still searching, yet to complete their grueling, unenviable task. Jean McKenzie, BBC News, Mouan Airport.