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JINDO, South Korea — Prosecutors in South Korea filed for arrest warrants on Friday for the ship’s captain, the third mate and another crew member on criminal charges of deserting their ship and passengers after a ferry capsized and possibly trapped hundreds of people, many of them high school students on a trip to a resort island.
Two days after the ferry capsized, as hopes for new survivors turned into despair, Danwon High School, 236 of whose students remained missing, plunged deeper into sadness on Friday after its vice principal was found dead in an apparent suicide.
The vice principal, Kang Min-gyu, 52, was found dead, hanging from a tree on a hill near a gymnasium where the families of those missing from the sunken ship have gathered. The police said they suspected Mr. Kang committed suicide.
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When asked about a possible motive, Lim Jong-ho, a spokesman of the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, whispered, “Probably a sense of guilt.†The office oversees Danwon High School in Ansan, a city south of Seoul, the South Korean capital.
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The ferry's captain, Lee Jun-seok, at Mokpo police station on Thursday. Credit Yonhap/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
South Korean divers entered the capsized ferry on Friday, but officials warned that the work would be painstaking and difficult. One of the leaders of the diving effort, Hwang Dae-sik, said that underwater visibility at the site was so poor, and currents so rapid, that the work was “like moving against the wind of a typhoon while barely being able to see your palm.†Currents were moving diagonally across the hull, he said, creating swirls and making it tricky for divers to enter the ship.
“We have been trying to put ropes into the ship so that we can use them as guides as we crawl into the ship in the darkness and hopefully bring out missing people,†Mr. Hwang, a senior official with the Maritime Rescue and Salvage Association, said in an interview. “By Thursday, we placed those ropes into the fourth floor, and today we are using them to enter.â€
Most of the passengers on the Sewol, the 6,825-ton ferry that tilted and sank Wednesday en route to the island of Jeju, had cabins on the fourth floor. But survivors said that at the time of the sinking, many people were trapped on the third floor, which had a cafeteria and a game room.
From the fourth floor, Mr. Hwang said, the divers hoped to expand their reach to other parts of the ship.
Despite the slow pace of the work, the news that the divers had entered the ship raised hopes among hundreds of parents at a gymnasium here that local officials have turned into a shelter for the families of the missing.
As of Friday afternoon, 28 deaths had been confirmed, and 268 people were still unaccounted for.
Rescuers were also using high-pressure hoses to pump oxygen into the ship, which by Friday was underwater, with only a tiny tip of its hull occasionally appearing between the waves. The rescuers hope that the oxygen will reach people who might still be alive in air pockets in the submerged vessel.
A crane arrived on the scene Friday and others were on their way, in preparation for the eventual salvaging of the vessel. But experts said it would take days, if not weeks, to complete the difficult task of raising the ship.
The third day of rescue efforts also brought potential clues as to how the trip to the resort island of Jeju, which began Tuesday night in Incheon, a port west of Seoul, had turned into one of South Korea’s worst disasters in decades.
On Friday, investigators said the ship’s captain, Lee Jun-seok, 69, who has been criticized for being among the first to leave the ship, was not at the steering house when the Sewol tilted and began sinking on Wednesday morning.
“He temporarily left the steering command to his third shipmate,†said Park Jae-uk, a senior investigator. “We are investigating where exactly he was at the time.†The captain returned to the bridge as soon as the ship began tilting, he said.
The Sewol was making a sharp turn in a shipping lane when it suddenly tilted Wednesday morning, a few hours before its scheduled arrival at Jeju off the southern coast of South Korea. Officials are still investigating whether the turn made under the third mate’s command was appropriate or too sharp, Mr. Park said.
“We are looking into whether it was the only reason†for the ship’s tilting, he said, “or if other factors were involved, such as the maintenance and operation of the ship.â€
Officials have raised the possibility that vehicles and other heavy cargo on the ferry might not have been properly secured, in which case they could have slid to one side when the sharp turn was made, causing the ship to lose its balance. They were also investigating widespread accounts that the crew had urged passengers to stay in their quarters even after the ship began sinking, instructions that may have resulted in many people being trapped below deck. Reaching those passengers has been the focus of rescue operations.
Also on Friday, government investigators said they would find and punish the people who had sent text messages or social media posts purporting to be from missing students, saying they were alive on the ship and waiting for help. A police investigation found the messages to be false.
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