ALL VICTIMS IDENTIFIED
At Muan airport, grieving families of victims had become increasingly frustrated by delays in identifying and releasing the bodies.
Officials have said the bodies were extensively damaged by the crash, making the work of identifying remains slow and immensely difficult, even as investigators had to preserve crash-site evidence.
But the country’s acting president said on Wednesday that the process had finally been completed, and that more bodies had been handed over to relatives so that they could hold funerals.
“Overnight, the identification of all 179 victims was completed,” said acting president Choi Sang-mok, who has been in office for less than a week.
“Our investigators, along with the US National Transportation Safety Board and the manufacturer, are conducting a joint investigation into the cause of the accident,” Choi said at a disaster response meeting on Wednesday.
“A comprehensive analysis and review of the aircraft’s structure and the black box data will reveal the cause of the accident,” Choi added.
The US investigators had arrived Monday and headed straight to Muan, with the initial on-site joint probe focusing on a navigation system that assists in aircraft landings, known as a localiser.
The localiser, installed on a concrete structure at Muan International Airport, is the barrier that has been blamed for exacerbating the severity of the Jeju Air crash.
The plane was largely carrying holidaymakers back from year-end trips to Bangkok, with all passengers Korean nationals except for two Thais.
A fuller account of what went wrong in the flight’s final moments is expected once authorities have analysed the black boxes.
Memorial altars for the victims have been set up nationwide, including in Seoul and at Muan airport.
Source: CNA
