Divers Find Another Body Six Months After Sewol Ferry Disaster
Another body was
reportedly discovered by divers inside a sunken South Korean ferry on
Tuesday — six months after it capsized killing around 300 people. The
badly decomposed body, thought to be that of a woman, was found in the
fourth-deck female bathroom of the doomed Sewol at around 5:25 p.m.
local time (4:25 a.m. ET), local officials told the Yonhap news agency.
"An operation is now underway to retrieve the body from the ship," an official involved in the recovery operation told AFP.
The discovery raised the confirmed death toll to 295 and lowered the
number of those missing to nine. The ferry sank off the southern island
of Jindo on April 16. Many of those who died were teenage students on a
school trip. No bodies had been found since July 18. Prosecutors on
Monday sought the death penalty
for the captain, Lee Joon-seok, 68, who is on trial along with 14 other
crew members accused of abandoning the sharply listing ferry after
telling the passengers to stay put in their cabins.
