Seoul – South Korea on Saturday marked the second anniversary of the Sewol ferry disaster, as distraught families still seeking relatives’ remains hope the massive sunken vessel can be recovered from the ocean floor.

More than 300 people died, mostly students, when the Sewol sank off the southwestern island of Jindo, in a tragedy that shocked and enraged the country.

Following the disaster, it became clear it was primarily caused by human error – an illegal redesign, overloaded cargo bay, inexperienced crew and a questionable relationship between operators and state regulators.

Memorial events were planned Saturday in Seoul and in Ansan, where the students studied.

Bringing the 6,825-tonne ferry to the surface has been a key demand of the victims’ families, who cling to hopes that nine bodies still unaccounted for may yet be recovered.

Seoul announced last year its plans to salvage the ship and selected a Chinese company to spearhead the $72 million project.

The operation to raise the vessel is expected to begin next month, and could be finished by late July.

“The purpose of our salvage operation is to bring back the nine missing bodies safely to the families,” Yeon Yeong-Jin, an official from South Korea’s Maritime Ministry, which is overlooking the operation, told reporters this week.

The Sewol lies more than 40 metres (130 feet) beneath the sea’s surface, and officials say lifting the 145-metre-long vessel from the seabed without splitting it into sections first will be the main challenge.

“Unfortunately, nothing can be guaranteed and we can only do the very best we can do to ensure that the risk is minimised,” said Simon Burthem, a naval architect at TMC, a global consulting firm involved in the salvage project.

Still, he said there was an 80 per cent chance the operation would succeed.

“Lifting the wreck in one piece from such a depth has never been done before, so this is a very, very difficult and challenging project and indeed a world first,” he said.

Wang Weiping, the site superintendent of the Chinese salvage company, praised the dangerous work required by dive teams in often treacherous conditions ahead of the planned ship recovery.

Their main task had been to seal the vessel’s with netting to ensure nothing – such as human remains – tumbles out when the ship is being lifted.

For the families of the nine victims whose bodies were never recovered, the two-year wait has been emotionally draining.

“It’s been 730 days and I can see the ocean before me,” said Lee Keum-Hui, who has been camping out at Paengmok harbour near the salvage site, praying for the recovery of her 16-year-old daughter’s body.

“I know where she is but I can’t get her,” Lee said.

“I know the government can do more. But all I can do is just wait and trust its words,” she told AFP.

Other bereaved family members accused the government of a lack of transparency.

“Everything is conducted behind closed doors and the families are not permitted to observe the recovery operation,” said Jung Seong-Wook, who acts as a families’ representative for the salvage project.

The maritime ministry says it can arrange trips for the families as long as they do not “disrupt salvage operations,” stressing the need for “intense concentration” at what they call a critical time.

For relatives like Lee, the prospect of of not recovering victims’ remains is almost unbearable.

“We tremble with fear at even the slightest chance of never finding the missing bodies,” she said.

MASHIKI – A more powerful quake hit southern Japan early Saturday, killing at least seven people, toppling large buildings and triggering a massive landslide just over a day after an earlier tremor which left nine dead.

The quake on the southwestern island of Kyushu sparked a fresh wave of destruction and was followed by a wave of aftershocks in the region where nerves are already frayed following Thursday’s deadly earthquake.

The powerful shaking set off a huge landslide that swept away homes and cut off a highway in one area, and unlike the earlier quake which mostly affected old houses, larger buildings were damaged and some toppled across Kumamoto prefecture, the epicentre of the quakes.

Separately, an active volcano in the area erupted Saturday morning, a local government official said, cautioning, however, it was unclear if the small-scale event was linked to the quakes.

Takayuki Matsushita, an official with Kumamoto prefecture, said seven were confirmed dead, citing police and fire departments.

Public broadcaster NHK, meanwhile, put the death toll at nine and said there were at least 760 people injured, while a government spokesperson said scores were trapped or buried alive.

Eleven people were stuck in a damaged apartment building in Minami-Aso near the landslide, another Kumamoto prefecture official said.

“We don’t know their condition,” he said, declining to be named.

Meanwhile, a large fire that broke out at an apartment complex in Yatsushiro city killed one person, city official Kiichiro Terada confirmed.

“We are also checking if any more people failed to escape,” he said, adding that the fire was under control.

In nearby Kumamoto city, authorities were evacuating patients from a hospital over fears it could collapse and images showed the building slanted.

Hisako Ogata, 61, evacuated to a nearby park with her daughter, where some 50 other people sat on blue plastic sheets.

Strong quake strickes southwestern Japan

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AFP, Reuters, REUTERS/Kyodo

“We left my house as we could not stay due to continuous jolts,” Ogata told AFP.

“It was so scary,” she added. “Thank God we are still alive.”

An AFP journalist in the city at the time said he was jolted awake by powerful shaking, which sent the television set in his hotel room crashing to the floor. Staff urged guests to evacuate.

A ceiling at Kumamoto airport collapsed from the shaking, forcing it to close, Jiji Press reported, with no immediate plans to resume flights, and communications in the area were spotty.

Japan Meteorological Agency official Gen Aoki said Saturday’s quake was the strongest to hit Japan in recent days, and that Thursday’s was merely a “precursor”.

The US Geological Survey measured the quake at magnitude 7.0, or 6.3 times bigger than the 6.2 tremor recorded on Thursday.

The quake struck at 1:25 am (1625 GMT Friday) at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometres (6.2 miles).

Japan Meteorological Agency, which put the magnitude at a revised 7.3, initially issued a tsunami warning for the western coast of Kyushu but later lifted it.

Shotaro Sakamoto, a Kumamoto prefectural official, said the quake felt comparable to Thursday’s.

“It was really strong… many people on the street appeared panicked,” he told AFP.

Some 20,000 soldiers will be deployed to the area over the weekend to help rescue efforts, Defence Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was due to visit Kyushu later Saturday to inspect damage and rescue efforts, but Jiji reported his trip was cancelled.

“We are trying our best to assess the damage situation as it could spread,” he told reporters.

Japan, one of the most seismically active countries in the world, suffered a massive undersea quake on March 11, 2011 that sent a tsunami barrelling into the country’s northeast coast.

Some 18,500 people were left dead or missing, and several nuclear reactors went into meltdown at the Fukushima plant in the worst atomic accident in a generation.

A nuclear plant on Kyushu was unaffected by Saturday’s quake, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, the top government spokesman, told reporters.