[Yonhap News Photo]
The Sewol ferry that was raised from the seabed three years after it sank with the loss of more than 300 lives, most of them schoolchildren, will be carried to a port this week after a salvage team finished the drainage of water from the wreck, officials said Monday.
The work will take a couple of more days, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries in charge of the salvage operation said, adding it could be ready for transport to the southwestern port of Mokpo on Thursday.
Minister Kim Young-suk said the ferry would be put on the ground in Mokpo by April 6 for the search of nine victims who remained unaccounted for. The 6,825-ton ferry has been loaded onto a semisubmersible transport vessel since it was raised last week.
The overloaded Sewol was carrying 476 people, including 325 students from a high school in Ansan, when it sank off the southwestern island of Jindo on April 16, 2014. Only 75 students survived. A total of 295 bodies were recovered. The salvage operation has been led by China's state-run Shanghai Salvage Co. with a history of receiving good marks for its experience in salvaging sunken vessels.
The disaster -- blamed on the ship's illegal redesign and overloading left unchecked by regulators -- prompted calls to overhaul the nation's lax safety standards and tackle deep-rooted corruption.
It has been the subject of debate over the absence of ousted president Park Geun-hye for seven hours. She was impeached by parliament partly for neglecting her duty to supervise a rescue operation during the disaster. Government officials and coastguard authorities were criticized for failing to take quick steps.
Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
