Remains found during Sewol salvage operation

South Korean government said Tuesday that it found what appears to be the remains of a victim of the Sewol ferry disaster during its ongoing salvage operation, nearly three years after it sank with more than 300 people trapped inside.

The Ministry of Oceans and Fishers were in the process of checking whether the six pieces of bones found are of any of the nine passengers whose bodies remain unaccounted for. 

The salvage team found the bones at 11:25 a.m. on the deck of the semisubmersible ship, on which Sewol currently sits after being lifted out of water last week, while preparing to move it to the Mokpo Port, the ministry said.

“The remains were discovered underneath the block supporting lifting beams near the upper part of the ferry,” Lee Cheol-jo, an official in charge of the salvage operation from the ministry, told reporters.

“A total of six pieces of human bones have been found, with their size ranging from 4 to 18 centimeters.”

The salvage operation is temporarily on hold, he added.

Sewol, a 6,800-ton passenger ferry, was carrying 476 passengers -- mostly high school students on a field trip -- when it ran aground and sank off the southwestern island on April 16, 2014. Just 172 passengers were rescued. Nine are still missing.

Once the ferry is brought to shore, the authorities plan to search its interior to recover the nine missing bodies and find the causes of the sinking of the ferry.

The National Assembly on Tuesday passed a bill to establish a special committee to oversee the search and reinvestigate of the maritime disaster.

Questions over what caused the sinking and why the authorities failed to rescue so many passengers remain unanswered for many South Koreans, despite the government’s official investigation.

The government’s botched rescue operation was part of the reason why former President Park Geun-hye was impeached by the parliament, although the Constitutional Court in its decision to finalize her removal did not see it as an impeachable charge.

In 2014, state prosecutors had concluded that a combination of overloaded freight, a displacement of cargo and an erroneous sharp turn by unskilled helmsmen was the cause of the disaster. The following year, the Supreme Court acquitted the helmsmen, dismissing the prosecution’s claim as lacking proof. It sentenced the ship’s captain to life in prison for abandoning the ship, which was listing at that time, without rescuing passengers.

On Tuesday, the parliament also named five members to the committee, who will work with three others appointed earlier at the recommendation of an association of the victims’ families.

They include a lawyer and a former researcher and professor of the Korea Institute of Maritime and Fisheries Technology, according to parliamentary officials.

The eight-member committee will work over the next 10 months to oversee the reinvestigation, help determine the exact cause of the accident and bring those responsible to justice, the officials said.

By Ock Hyun-ju (laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)