Bereaved Families Uncover Remains with Hoes; Search Belatedly Resumes

Read the Reporter's Notebook Series: <Disasters and Tragedies, the Aftermath>
☞ [Reporter's Notebook ①] Search, Identification, Prevention: The State's Duties Shifted to the Bereaved Families
☞ [Reporter's Notebook ②] Can One Mourn Without Knowing the Cause of Death?

Kim Sung-Cheol lost his wife and daughter in the December 29 Jeju Air passenger plane crash at Muan Airport, which claimed 179 lives. Up until the first anniversary of the disaster, he spent most of his time at Muan Airport working on tasks related to the Bereaved Families Association. He had promised to return home after the first anniversary, but things did not go as planned. Struggling to adjust to daily life, he quit his job. Instead, he threw himself into working for the Bereaved Families Association, hoping to find healing for himself and be of help to other grieving families. One day, his son asked why he had not come home despite his promise, and only then did he look back on his son, who had been holding down the house all alone. Although he now spends more time at home, he still travels frequently to and from the airport, handling matters related to the resumption of the search for remains and personal belongings.

Kim's wife and daughter were social workers. In the summer of the year the crash occurred, the two had traveled to Japan on a flight out of Muan Airport. In the past, they had used Incheon or Gimhae Airport, but Muan Airport was convenient because it was only a 30 to 40-minute drive from their home. Right after the disaster, Kim was the first to identify his wife's body. Officials advised him that it might be better not to look in person, but he could not walk away. Later, when he received word that his daughter's identity had been confirmed through DNA analysis, Kim told other family members not to enter and went to see his daughter alone. To his astonishment, his daughter's face looked just as it normally did. At that moment, Kim said, he could picture vividly how his wife must have held their daughter tightly in her arms.

"Her face was so clean and untouched. I have a photo I took of my daughter sleeping when she was little, and it looked genuinely 100% identical to that photo. But at that moment... how should I put it? A picture formed in my mind. Her mother must have held her tightly in her arms... 'Ah, that's why our daughter's face was spared while her mother's was damaged.' That picture became so clear... and I felt so immensely grateful to my wife right then, even though she must have been terrified herself..."


Kim Yu-jin, head of the Bereaved Families Association, lost her parents and younger brother in the disaster. Her younger brother, Kang-heon, worked at a company in Cheonan and had received a vacation reward for long-term service. Although he could have traveled alone, he decided to take along his parents, who lived in Gwangju. To spare his parents the long trip to Incheon Airport and make travel as comfortable as possible, they used Muan Airport. The three met with tragedy on their way back home from the trip. Kim, having lost both parents and her younger brother all at once, said, "In effect, my entire family was wiped out." She continued, "They were truly wonderful parents and he was truly a wonderful brother. Having to hold funerals for all three of them at once was devastating... I spent days that no human being could possibly bear."

Yet that was not the end. More than a year after the disaster, Kim received shocking news out of the blue. Her father's remains had been additionally discovered in the aircraft wreckage that had been kept in storage after the crash. It was a shinbone measuring over 25 centimeters. "When a reinvestigation of the aircraft wreckage began and they opened the large sacks, what came out were food waste, snack bags, personal effects, aircraft fragments, half-burned garbage, and field mice. And mixed in with all of that were our families' remains... If it had been just one or two small pieces, I would have at least tried to understand that such an oversight might have been unavoidable. But the very first remain discovered there was my father's shinbone, and it was over 25 centimeters long. It was of a size impossible to miss with the naked eye, a remain that could never have been overlooked had they conducted a careful search. To me, that was not just a bone, but my father himself, who had supported and held me up throughout my entire life... Overcome with guilt, I thought to myself: 'How could I have slept comfortably, eaten, and lived my life while leaving my father abandoned outside the airport for over a year?'"


On April 13, a search of the crash site resumed at Muan International Airport. It had been one year and three months since the disaster occurred. Personnel from the police, military, fire services, and the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board were redeployed to the crash site. Dividing the area through which the aircraft had passed into sections, they stripped away topsoil and sifted the excavated dirt through screens. During the re-search, the number of presumed remains and personal belongings uncovered steadily grew. According to the progress report on the re-search presented to the bereaved families by the Office for Government Policy Coordination on September 30, a total of 1,709 presumed human remains and 906 personal effects were additionally recovered from the site. The term "presumed human remains" refers to items collected from the site on the basis of being suspected remains, and does not mean that all have been definitively identified as victims' remains. Among them, 1,265 pieces were confirmed to belong to 141 victims. These additional discoveries were made across the crash site area where relevant agencies had already concluded two previous searches. Under what judgment and criteria, then, were those two earlier searches brought to an end?

The first search was overseen by the Jeonnam Fire Service from the day of the crash on December 29, 2024, until January 7 of the following year. At a situation assessment meeting on January 7, fire authorities concluded that there were no further remains to be found and ended the operation. However, on that very day, police discovered six additional human remains at the site. The Joint Government Public Service Discipline Inspection Team under the Office for Government Policy Coordination determined that terminating the initial search under such circumstances was a premature decision.¹ Two days later, on January 9, the Jeonnam Provincial Police Agency resumed searching. The second search concluded on January 15 after reaching an agreement with the bereaved families. Yet on the very next day, January 16, more remains were discovered at the site. Despite being aware of the additional discovery, the police did not examine the necessity of continuing the search. The inspection team concluded that in both instances, authorities brought the searches to an end without adequately weighing the possibility of finding additional remains or fully evaluating site conditions.

At the time, the National Fire Agency's operational manuals lacked specific guidelines on the scope and methods for searching and recovering human remains at aircraft accident scenes. Because of this, authorities such as the fire service and police set search boundaries arbitrarily in the field without rational standards, and it was found that even when inexperienced personnel were deployed, proper training and specific search directives were not provided. The search operations were brought to an end twice in a state where detailed search protocols were missing and on-site command and supervision were deficient.


Problems persisted during the subsequent collection and storage of the aircraft wreckage after the searches concluded. According to government inspection findings, the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board collected aircraft wreckage from the accident scene over two days starting January 16, 2025, placing it into large sacks and containers. During this process, officials failed to properly verify whether human remains or personal belongings were intermingled with the wreckage. Nor did they formulate subsequent investigation plans or detailed inspection procedures. Instead of being moved to designated regulatory storage facilities such as hangars, the wreckage was left on the asphalt roads of Muan Airport inside large sacks and netting. Covered only with waterproof tarpaulins and sunshades, it was kept in this manner for roughly 14 months. Although relevant regulations and manuals mandated that wreckage be safely stored and managed against external weather conditions like rain and snow, these rules were not followed.

Beginning in September of last year, the bereaved families demanded a re-examination of the aircraft wreckage. This request was relayed to the accident investigation board through the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's victim support team between September and October of that year, but necessary measures, such as reviewing the release of stored debris, were never taken. On January 13 of this year, ahead of an on-site inspection by the National Assembly's Special Committee for Parliamentary Investigation, accident investigation board officials conducted a preliminary site survey and discovered additional wreckage fragments and personal belongings. Even then, the inspection team revealed, officials merely collected the discovered wreckage and did not consider conducting an additional search. Although circumstances indicating that remains or belongings might still be present surfaced multiple times even after search operations had ceased, it took more than a year for an all-out re-search to finally begin.


Before the government's comprehensive re-search began, the bereaved families took it upon themselves to examine the vicinity of the crash site. Kim Sung-Cheol recounted that when remains were found within the aircraft wreckage, the families began suspecting that unrecovered remains might still be left around the crash area. "We thought there were only plane parts there, and we just hoped we might find even a single personal effect... But seeing how remains were neglected like that, we thought there could be more at the actual site, so we went combing through the grassy fields outside the airport." The families took up hand hoes themselves to inspect the airport grounds, and during this process, presumed human remains and personal effects were indeed found. Presumed remains were discovered not only through the families' independent searches but also as relevant agencies rechecked accident debris. Prior to launching the all-out re-search, relevant agencies recovered 115 additional presumed remains, 74 of which were confirmed through forensic examination to belong to 44 victims.

The government-led full-scale re-search across the crash site halted once on the afternoon of its very first day. This was because the bereaved families raised concerns over the lack of clarity regarding who held overall command amidst the deployment of multiple agencies, including the police, military, and fire service. Search methods also varied from one agency to another. The following day, after consultations with the families, relevant authorities reorganized the command structure so that the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board oversaw the site. Search sectors that had initially been divided by agency were also realigned. While earlier digging had reached depths of up to 30 centimeters, the revised protocol called for excavating up to 1 meter where necessary and sifting the dirt through screens. Even after search sectors were reorganized and digging depths increased, presumed remains continued to turn up at the site. When reporters visited in early September, military personnel were still carrying buckets of dirt and sorting out items presumed to be personal effects one by one at workstations.

Touring the site with the reporting team, Kim Sung-Cheol felt heartache as he watched military and police personnel toiling away under hot weather in an operation that was started so late. "These people working so hard right now—under normal circumstances, this is something that should never have had to happen." Verification of the 995 designated deep-search points was completed by September 14, and intensive searches of blind spots along with internal checks by search agencies continued through late September. However, when explaining the progress of the re-search to the bereaved families on September 30, the government stated that it could not definitively assert that 100% of the remains had been recovered. The families are raising the possibility that unrecovered remains may still linger around the localizer embankment and its periphery, as well as the outer perimeter of the airport. The families and relevant agencies plan to hold further consultations on the scope and methods for additional searches in those areas.


Bereaved families are still staying inside a temporary shelter at the airport. According to representative Kim Yu-jin, around ten family members have virtually lived at the airport, except for times they returned home to conduct funerals, while some 30 others take turns standing guard at the site. Even as the families kept vigil at the airport, the criminal investigation and the issue of holding funerals for belatedly recovered remains dragged on. In August, police booked 74 individuals on charges including occupational negligence resulting in death or injury, but the Bereaved Families Association pointed out that by the 600th day since the disaster, not a single responsible party had been indicted. The families also stated that responsibilities between the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and Jeju Air regarding who would oversee funerals for remains recovered belatedly during the re-search had yet to be resolved. The final investigation report from the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board has still not been released, one year and nine months after the tragedy. Investigations into how the concrete localizer embankment affected the scale of the damage are also ongoing.

On September 14, the bereaved families requested a public interest audit from the Board of Audit and Inspection, demanding an examination into eight issues, including the flawed initial recovery, the neglect of remains and personal effects, potential infringement on the independence of the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board, and suspicions regarding the localizer. With the second anniversary of the disaster approaching, neither the determination of the crash's causes and responsibilities nor the procedures to properly lay to rest the belatedly recovered family members have been concluded. And so, the families' life at the airport continues to stretch on. (To be continued in Part 4)

¹ Joint Government Public Service Discipline Inspection Team under the Office for Government Policy Coordination, "Results of Inspection on Circumstances Surrounding Poor Recovery of Remains of Dec. 29 Passenger Plane Disaster Victims"


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※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.