Rescue workers install floats where the capsized passenger ferry sank in the sea off Jindo island.
Photo via Reuters/Yonhap
The South Korean ferry tragedy, from which over 260 people are still missing, has added another casualty, after the vice principal from the high school that had over 300 of its students on board was found dead in what is believed to be a suicide.
Kang Min-kyu, one of the 179 passengers rescued, was found hanging from a tree at a small mountainon Jindo island, near a temporary shelter where families of those still missing have gathered to learn the fate of their loved ones. The vice principal at Danwon High School in Ansan, Kang had organized the school’s annual field trip to Jejudo, the destination to which students and faculty never reached.
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The 52-year-old had been missing since Thursday. The South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo reported that, before Kang went missing, police had questioned him about whether he took proper care of 325 students and 14 teachers as the ferry was sinking,
While Reuters reported that no suicide note was found at the scene, multiple South Korean media outlets, as well as the Associated Press, are reporting that a two-page suicide note was found in Kang’s wallet.
“I don’t even know what happened to more than 200 people,” Kang reportedly wrote, according to the JoongAng Ilbo. “For me to live on my own is too much to bear. Don’t hold anyone else responsible but me. I’m the one who organized this trip. Burn my body and scatter it where the ferry sank.”
Kang, a diabetes and hypoglycemia patient, was in a semi-unconscious state as he was rescued by a helicopter from the sinking ferry, reported Yonhap.
Three days after the ferry capsized, rescuers are still struggling to find 268 missing people from the ferry after 179 were rescued on the first day and 29 have been found dead, as of 12 p.m. PST. At least 14 of the 29 casualties are students or teachers from Danwon High School.
Divers began injecting air into the sunken ship to sustain potential survivors and were able to search the restaurant and the bridge of the ferry, but students are believed to be on a different floor.
In related developments, South Korean prosecutors announced that the sunken ferry’s captain, Lee Joon-seok, widely criticized for escaping the ship without evacuating passengers first, was formally charged Friday with five violations, including negligence, causing bodily injury, not seeking rescue from other ships and violating seamen’s law.
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