South Korea's deadliest plane crash in decades claims 179 lives

A passenger plane carrying 181 people, including six crew members, crashed in southwestern South Korea early Sunday, killing 179 people, according to Korea’s National Fire Agency.

It marks the deadliest aviation accident involving a Korean airline since a Korean Air Lines Co.'s plane crashed in Guam in 1997, killing 229.

A plane operated by Korea’s Jeju Air Co., which had departed Bangkok earlier, was scheduled to land at Muan International Airport at 8:30 am but failed in an earlier landing attempt because it could not lower its landing gear, according to aviation authorities.

When the plane attempted a belly landing without deploying its landing gear about 30 minutes later, it rammed into a wall near the end of the runway after touching down and was engulfed in flames, Korean TV footage of Korean news media showed.

Rescuers have found 179 dead and rescued only two people, who are both crew members. The rescue operation has turned into a recovery operation. 

Of the 181 people on board, two passengers were Thai nationals, Thailand’s Foreign Ministry confirmed. The remaining passengers are believed to all be Koreans. 

The cause of the accident has not been confirmed but the landing gear malfunction was believed to have been caused by a bird strike, according to unnamed sources.

TV footage showed a fire in one of the plane’s engines as it flew over the airport before its final landing. One of the two rescued crew members also told investigators that one of the plane’s engines had exploded with smoke as it approached the airport to land.

The plane was a Boeing 737-800, which has been widely used by low-cost airlines. Jeju Air started operating the crashed plane 15 years ago. 

KOREAN AIRLINE’S WORST PLANE CRASH SINCE 1997

Today’s crash marks Korea’s deadliest plane crash since a Korean Air jet slammed into a hill in Guam, a U.S. territory in the western Pacific, in 1997, killing 229 of the 254 people on board.

This also is the worst aviation accident to occur on Korean soil. Previous major aviation accidents in the country were an Air China accident near Gimhae Airport in 2002, killing 129, and a 1993 Asiana Airlines crash in Mokpo, which took 68 lives.

This is also the first fatal accident not only for Jeju Air, Korea’s largest low-cost carrier, since its inception in 2005 but in the country’s budget airline history.

At a press conference on Sunday afternoon, Jeju Air Chief Executive Kim Yi-bae apologized to everyone who suffered in the accident and their families.

“We will do everything we can to deal with this accident,” said Kim, adding that the airline will work with the government to determine the cause, which is not yet confirmed.

Later in the day, Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation said officials had found the plane's two black boxes — a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder. 

AT A TIME OF A POLITICAL TURMOIL

Korea’s deadliest plane accident in decades occurred at a time of political turmoil in the country, with an interim leader filling the power vacuum after the impeachment of the country’s President Yoon Suk Yeol earlier this month.

Korea's acting President Choi Sang-mok, named interim leader on Friday amid an ongoing political crisis, visited the scene of the plane crash on Sunday.

He designated Muan a special disaster zone eligible for state support after the deadly plane accident at the city's airport, about 300 kilometers southwest of Seoul, and said the government was dedicating all of its resources to dealing with the crash.

Choi, who is also Korea’s finance minister and deputy prime minister, has taken over as Korea’s acting president after Han Duck-soo, the country’s prime minister who was made acting president earlier this month upon Yoon’s impeachment, was ousted by Parliament on Friday.

The opposition-controlled National Assembly voted for Han’s impeachment for his refusal to appoint three judges to fill vacancies in the Constitutional Court, the body that began a process late Friday to decide whether to remove or reinstate Yoon.

Immediately upon assuming the post, Choi said he is confident that the country’s economy is resilient and its national security is tight.

But today’s fatal accident would test of his capacity as a national leader as it could add to the country's political, social and economic woes.

Korea was embroiled in political scandals after the government failed to hold key officials to account for the deadly crowd crush accident in Itaewon, Seoul, during Halloween festivities in 2022, which claimed more than 150 lives.

The country’s other deadly tragedy involving the Sewol ferry in 2014, which killed more than 300 people, resulted in the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye in 2016 and caused deep social and political divides in Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

Both the ruling and opposition parties have vowed to collaborate to deal with the country's deadliest plane crash. 

(Updated with new death toll, finding of black boxes and declaration of special disaster zone by the country's acting president) 

Write to Jeong-Hoon An at Ajh6321@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.