South Korean ferry raised after three years

The ferry, the Sewol, was structurally unsound, overloaded and traveling too fast on a turn when it capsized and sank during a routine voyage off the southwest coast on April 16, 2014. Bereaved families have been calling for the ship to be raised and for a more thorough investigation into the disaster. 

Officials also hope to find the last nine missing bodies. Salvagers started to bring up the vessel, which has been lying on its side at a depth of  144 feet, late on Wednesday, and worked through the night. 

“The work needs to be done very cautiously,” Lee Cheol-jo, an official at the Ministry of Ocean and Fisheries, which is in charge of the operation said. Lee said the ferry would be raised as high as 42 feet above the sea and then moved onto a semi-submersible vessel. That operation was expected to take until Friday and it would then be taken to a nearby port, but that could take up to 12 or 13 days, he said. 

A Chinese salvage company has fitted 33 beams beneath the hull with 66 hydraulic jacks inching the ship up. Of those killed, 250 were teenagers from the same high-school, many of whom obeyed crew instructions to remain in their cabins even as crew members were escaping the sinking ship. 

The botched rescue and toll of children in one of Asia’s most technically advanced economies shocked and angered the country, with former President Park Geun-hye and her administration the focus of much of the ire at the time.