By Ju-min Park and Dogyun Kim
MUAN COUNTY, South Korea (Reuters) – Jeon Je-young continues to play video of the plane with her daughter and 180 others on board crashing into a wall and bursting into flames at a South Korean airport.
His daughter Mi-sook died on board. He still can't believe it.
“When I saw the video of the accident, the plane seemed to be out of control,” said Jeon, 71. “The pilots probably had no choice but to do it. My daughter, who is only in her 40s, ended up like this. This is unbelievable.”
Mi-sook was a kind-hearted girl, he said. She brought some food and next year's calendar to his house on December 21, which became his last, brief moment with her.
“She is much nicer than my son, sometimes she invites me out to eat,” Jeon recalls, showing her latest exchanges with her daughter on her mobile phone.
The deadliest plane crash ever in South Korea killed 179 people on Sunday, when a plane landed and skidded off the runway, exploding into a fireball at Muan International Airport.
Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, arriving from the Thai capital Bangkok with 175 passengers and six crew on board, was seen skidding down the runway with no visible landing gear before crashing into navigation equipment and a wall in an explosion. of flames and debris.
Only two people, both crew members, survived and were treated for their injuries.
PAIN AND RAGE
Authorities mentioned the names of some of those killed in the accident, sparking an explosion of grief and anger among the passengers' families gathered in the airport's arrivals area.
They screamed, cried and collapsed on the floor of the terminal where their loved ones had to return home.
Crime scene investigators collected saliva exchanges from the families for DNA testing to identify the victims.
Jeon's daughter was on her way home after traveling with friends to Bangkok for the Christmas holidays. She leaves behind a devastated family, including a husband and teenage daughter.
“The water near the airport is not deep. There are softer fields here than this concrete runway. Why couldn't the pilot land there?” Jeon said.
Firefighters reported that the impact of the crash had left the plane “almost completely destroyed.”
“Through two collisions and explosions, most of the passengers were thrown from the plane, although fortunately two crew members survived in the tail,” said Yeom Dong-bu, a Muan firefighter who was dispatched to the scene.
“I used to work in ambulances, so I've seen these kinds of terrible things, like car accidents, but not on this scale,” he added.
Mi-sook was identified by her fingerprints and her family is searching for a funeral home near their city of Gwangju to transport her body there.
“She was almost home, so (she saw) that there was no need to call the family (to leave any final message). She thought she would come home,” Jeon said.
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