Korea says won’t give up the search for Budapest boat victims

South Korea vowed Friday not to give up hope in the desperate search for 21 people still missing two days after a sightseeing boat carrying mainly South Korean tourists sank on the Danube.

Rescuers are battling strong currents on the swollen river in their search for any more survivors of the Mermaid sightseeing boat, which overturned and was swallowed by the Danube just seconds after it collided with a much larger cruise ship in pouring rain late Wednesday.

Hungarian police have detained the captain of the river cruise ship involved in the crash on a busy stretch of the Danube near the parliament building.

South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha has arrived in Budapest with a emergency task force and visited the site of the crash on Friday along with her Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto.

“We have firmly decided that we won’t give up our hopes about the possibility of finding survivors” until all the missing are located, she told a press conference.

But the prospects of finding any more survivors are seen as very slim, as attempts by hundreds of Hungarian police and army rescuers to find the victims and reach the submerged vessel are hampered by fast-flowing currents.

Mourners have laid flowers along the banks of the waterway for the seven South Korean tourists who are known to have been killed and the 21 people who remain missing — including a six-year-old girl and the boat’s Hungarian captain and a crew member.

Only seven people are known to have survived so far.

Police said Thursday they had detained the Ukrainian captain of the larger ship, the Viking Sigyn, for questioning over the incident.

In a statement they said that 64-year-old Yuriy C, a resident of Odessa, was “questioned as a suspect… in relation to ‘endangering waterborne traffic resulting in multiple deaths'”.

The Viking Sigyn itself left Budapest with a new captain on Friday and reached the Hungarian city of Esztergom, according to local media.

– Risky operation –

Some survivors have described the terrifying ordeal as the Mermaid sank almost immediately and they were pitched into the dark waters.
Some were able to grab on to rescue buoys and watched in horror as fellow passengers struggled to stay afloat.

“The current was so fast and people were floating away but the rescue team did not come,” 31-year-old woman, identified only by her surname Jung, told the Korean news agency Yonhap.

The Mermaid is still completely submerged under the murky waters of the Danube, which has been swollen by weeks of rain.

A floating crane was erected near the accident site, as well as a small pier for use by divers.

But the strong current has made diving attempts very risky and complicated plans to lift the wreck.

Szijjarto said that “several hundred” members of the emergency service and the armed forces remained active in the search and rescue operation on Friday but admitted: “We have to say that circumstances are working against us.”

He added that a first attempt to reach the vessel on Thursday had been unsuccessful.

The water level is not expected to start receding before Tuesday.

Police have said the strong current swept one of the victims around 11 kilometres (seven miles) downstream of the accident site.

The search operation has been extended to cover the entire length of the Danube in Hungary south of Budapest and Hungarian authorities have also contacted their counterparts in neighbouring Serbia.

– Families arriving –

Families of some of the victims are due to arrive in Budapest on Friday and a candlelit vigil for the victims is expected at the South Korean embassy in Budapest on Friday evening.

Lee Sang-moo, chief operating officer of Very Good Tour which organised the trip for the South Koreans, said most of the Mermaid’s passengers were in their 50s and 60s.

The youngest was the missing six-year-old girl who was travelling with her mother and grandparents and the oldest was a man in his early 70s.

The collision happened on a popular part of the Danube river for pleasure trips, from where sightseers can view the city and parliament illuminated at night.

Larger river cruise boats travelling on the Danube between Germany and the Black Sea typically spend several days moored in the capital.

The tragedy comes five years after the Sewol ferry sinking in South Korea which killed more than 300 people in one of the deadliest maritime disasters in the country.