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 The diver had to separate the two because he could not carry two
corpses up to the surface at the same time.
"I started to cry thinking that they didn't want to leave each
other," he told the Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper on the island of
Jindo on Thursday, near where the overloaded ferry went down last
week.
The parents of the boy whose shaking voice first raised the alarm
that an overloaded ferry was sinking believe his body has also been
found, the coastguard said.
The parents had seen his body and clothes and concluded he was their
son, but he has not been formally identified.
More than 300 people, most of them students and teachers from the
Danwon High School, are dead or missing presumed dead after the
April 16 disaster. The confirmed death toll on Thursday was 171.
The Sewol ferry, weighing almost 7,000 tons, sank on a routine trip
from the port of Incheon, near Seoul, to the southern holiday island
of Jeju. Investigations are focused on human error and mechanical
failure.
Prosecutors said they had raided two shipping watchdogs, the Korean
Shipping Association and the Korean Register of Shipping, as part of
their expanded investigation into the disaster. Yonhap news agency
said they would investigate whether ship safety certificates were in
order.
"The objective was to investigate malpractices and corruption in the
entire shipping industry," Song In-taek, head deputy chief
prosecutor at Incheon District Prosecution Service, told reporters.
Prosecutors have also raided the home of Yoo Byung-un, the head of a
family that owns the Chonghaejin Marine Co. Ltd, the company that
operated the Sewol. They had also seized another ferry run by the
company to check for safety.
A lawyer for the family said it would take "all legal and social
responsibility for this tragic accident if they have to as major
stakeholders of the company". He did not say the family was assuming
liability.
Of the 476 passengers and crew on board the Sewol, 339 were children
and teachers from the school in Ansan, a gritty suburb on the
outskirts of Seoul, who were on an outing to Jeju.
As the ferry began sinking, the crew told the children to stay in
their cabins. Most of those who obeyed died. Many of those who
flouted or did not hear the instructions and went out on deck were
rescued.
Some of the bodies had their hands held tightly like fetuses to try
to keep warm, a newspaper said.
Classes at the school resumed on Thursday with banks of flowers
surrounding photos of each of the victims, dressed in their school
uniforms. Almost 250 teenagers and teachers at the school have died
or are presumed dead.
Fellow students filed past, offering white chrysanthemums in somber
tributes. Yellow ribbons, with names and messages inscribed, were
tied around a chain-link fence.
FIRST DISTRESS CALL
In the classrooms of the missing, friends posted messages on desks,
blackboards and windows, in the days after disaster struck, asking
for the safe return of their friends. "If I see you again, I'll tell you I love you, because I haven't
said it to you enough," read one.
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The school provided therapy sessions for the children as they
returned. The first distress call from the sinking vessel was made
by a boy with a shaking voice, three minutes after the vessel made
its fateful last turn, a fire service officer told Reuters.
The boy called the emergency 119 number which put him through to the
fire service, which in turn forwarded him to the coastguard two
minutes later. That was followed by about 20 other calls from
children on board the ship to the emergency number.
The ship, 146 meters (479 feet) long and 22 meters wide, was over
three times overloaded, according to official recommendations, with
cargo poorly stowed and inadequate ballast.
Moon Ki-han, an executive at Uryeon (Union Transport Co.), the firm
that supervised cargo loading, told Reuters there were 105
containers onboard, some of which toppled into the sea as the ship
listed.
Forty-five were loaded on to the front deck and 60 into the lower
decks, Moon said. In total, the ship was carrying 3,600 metric tons
of cargo including containers, vehicles and other goods, he said.
A member of parliament this week said the Korean Register of
Shipping recommended a load of 987 tons for the Sewol.
Captain Lee Joon-seok, 69, and other crew members who abandoned ship
have been arrested on negligence charges. Lee was also charged with
undertaking an "excessive change of course without slowing down".
One crew member said on Thursday she and six colleagues were "under
command" to abandon ship.
The unidentified crew member, speaking briefly to reporters on the
way from court back into detention, was hidden behind a surgical
mask and wearing a baseball cap with a jacket hood. She did not
elaborate.
Another crew member was asked if there was any discussion about
trying to save the passengers.
"At that moment, we were on the third floor and except for the third-floor situation, we weren't aware of anything else," the crew member
said.
(Additional reporting by Kahyun Yang, Miyoung Kim, Sohee Kim an
Ju-min Park; writing by Nick Macfie; editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan
and Robert Birsel)
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