South Korean Coast Guard rescue teams began searching Sunday for nine fishermen whose boat capsized in waters southwest of the country’s coast.
The 24-ton boat capsized at around 23:19 (local time) 16.6 kilometers west of Daebichi Island, an uninhabited region 20 kilometers southwest of South Korea’s Sinan County, officials said.
The boat has a total of 12 crew members, including 3 foreigners, and so far only three of the sailors have been rescued by a ship that was in the vicinity, as reported by the Yonhap news agency.
The Minister of Oceans and Fisheries, Cho Seung-hwan, said during a meeting with relatives in Sinan that preliminary investigations suggest that most of the missing were on deck, so they would have left the boat during the shipwreck, and ruled out the possibility that they are locked in the ship.
According to the agency, the ministry has deployed a search of a larger area with nearby fishing boats, aircraft and members of the Maritime Rescue Unit at the request of President Yoon Suk Yeol.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
