Home > National > Social Affairs

Grieving families of Jeju Air victims continue to wait for loved one's remains

Published: 31 Dec. 2024, 15:29 Updated: 31 Dec. 2024, 17:09

LIM JEONG-WON
[email protected]

Citizens pay their respects to the victims of the Jeju Air crash at a joint memorial set up at the Olympic Memorial Judo Center in Daegu on Dec. 31. [NEWS1]

Only four bodies of the 179 people killed in the Jeju Air crash at Muan International Airport have been returned to their families as of Tuesday morning, leaving many mourning families desperately waiting to send off their loved ones.

The older brother of a 64-year-old victim surnamed Kim made a reservation for a funeral parlor at around 7 p.m. on Monday. While waiting for the transfer of his brother's remains Kim received a call from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport saying that the remains have to be re-examined and that the transfer will be delayed. The wait continued through Monday night until Tuesday.

Kim, who ran a small business, was returning from a trip to Thailand with eight friends around the same age when the tragedy struck. Kim’s mother, 96, still does not know about her son’s death as the family and his brother did not have the heart to tell her for fear of shock.

“My mother lives near the airport, but I couldn’t tell her the truth, so I prepared dinner for her and told her that I would eat out with the grandchildren before coming here,” Kim’s brother told the JoongAng Ilbo, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily, at a funeral parlor. “She will be 97 in a day or two and we thought she shouldn’t know about this, so we are keeping quiet.”

Kim’s brother and family eventually left the funeral parlor late at night, without receiving the remains.

“The police told us to wait because some of the body parts were decomposed and could be mixed with others,” said the brother. “We had to sign a statement saying that this was okay and tried to hold the funeral, but it has been delayed.”

In another case, a married couple died together in the plane crash but only one body was returned to the family, so they could not hold a proper funeral. The victims were a 59-year-old man surnamed Park and a 55-year-old woman surnamed Cho.

On Monday evening, the body of the husband, Park, was placed at a funeral parlor in Gwangju near Muan in South Jeolla, but the funeral did not follow the wishes of the bereaved family who wanted a joint funeral with his wife, Cho.

“Park’s body is being stored in a freezer and isn’t in a very good condition,” said a funeral parlor official.

On the same night, the families of eight victims had time reserved to hold a funeral service, but the service had to be posted because the victim's remains had not been delivered.

“We had arbitrarily set the funeral for Wednesday, but we received a call from the families earlier that they could not all come, so we postponed it to Thursday,” said the funeral parlor official. “But we are not sure of this date either, considering the circumstances.”

On Monday, the Transport Ministry and the South Jeolla Provincial Police Agency announced that only five victims had intact bodies that could be handed over to their bereaved families for burial and that the remaining bodies were severely damaged, altogether divided into around 660 pieces.

The representatives of the bereaved families initially said they would suspend funeral procedures until all the bodies were recovered, but rescinded this decision to say that they would leave it up to individual bereaved families.

“For the 28 victims whose autopsies, postmortem examinations, and DNA comparisons have all been completed, we plan to additionally hand them over starting at 2 p.m. today after completing the paperwork,” said Transport Minister Park Sang-woo in a briefing on Tuesday. “If they want to recover the bodies more completely, they can wait longer, and if they want to take them right away, they can do so.”

BY JANG SEO-YUN,JEON YUL,LIM JEONG-WON [[email protected]]