By Ju-min Park and Dogyun Kim
MUAN COUNTY, South Korea (Reuters) – Jeon Je-young continues to play the video of the plane with his daughter and another 180 people on board crashing into a wall and catching fire 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 going out of control,” said 71-year-old Jeon. “The pilots probably had no choice but to do it. My daughter, who is only in her mid-forties, ended up like this. This is unbelievable.”
Mi-sook was a warm-hearted child, 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 and sometimes asks me to dinner,” Jeon recalled, showing his last conversations with his daughter on his cell phone.
South Korea’s deadliest plane crash ever killed 179 people on Sunday when a plane belly-landed and skidded off the end of the runway, erupting in 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 sliding 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 injuries.
SADNESS AND ANGER
Authorities shouted out the names of some of those killed in the crash, sparking an explosion of grief and anger among the families of the passengers gathered in the airport’s arrivals hall.
They screamed, cried and collapsed on the floor of the terminal where their loved ones would return home.
Crime scene investigators collected saliva samples from families to conduct DNA tests to identify the victims.
Jeon’s daughter was on her way home after traveling to Bangkok with friends for the Christmas holidays. She leaves behind a devastated family, including a husband and a teenage daughter.
‘The water at the airport is not deep. Here are softer fields than this cement track. Why couldn’t the pilot land there?’ Jeon said.
Fire officials reported that the impact of the crash left the plane “almost completely destroyed.”
“Two collisions and an explosion ejected most of the passengers from the plane, although fortunately two crew members survived by the tail,” said Yeom Dong-bu, a Muan firefighter dispatched to the scene.
“I used to work on ambulances, so I’ve seen horrible things like this, like car accidents, but not on this scale,” he added.
Mi-sook was identified by her fingerprints and her family is looking for a funeral home near her city of Gwangju to transport her body there.
“She was almost home, so (she saw) there was no need to call the family (to leave a last message). She thought she was coming home,” Jeon said.
