[Anchor]

It has been determined that the tugboat that capsized off the coast of Busan yesterday (September 2) suffered the accident while turning to the right. The Coast Guard has expanded its search area to find the six missing crew members.

Reporter Bae Seong-jae has the details.

[Reporter]

During a briefing this morning, the Coast Guard stated that the TNS Catcher, the capsized tugboat, appears to have met with the accident while changing direction as it was towing a 66,000-ton container ship along with two other tugboats.

[Lee Kyeong-yeol, Head of Investigation, Busan Coast Guard: We presume that the vessel capsized due to the towline while making a starboard turn (change of direction)...]

The Coast Guard explained that the speed and timing did not match up as the tugboat was changing direction, and clarified that there was no collision with the container ship.

Among the eight crew members on board, one Indonesian crew member was rescued, while a South Korean navigator was found unconscious and later died.

The remaining six crew members are currently missing.

The TNS Catcher capsized at around 1:30 PM yesterday in waters 9 kilometers southeast of Oryukdo, and sank to the seabed at a depth of 87 meters at around 3:53 PM.

The sunken vessel has been confirmed to be located 6.5 kilometers east of Songjeong Port and about 6 kilometers southeast of Daebyeon Port, which is 3.7 kilometers away from the initial accident site.

[Sung Dae-hoon, Chief of the Busan Coast Guard: We deployed an unmanned submersible to that location for an underwater search, but we were unable to find the missing persons because visibility was only 30 centimeters.]

The Coast Guard plans to expand its search area into 17 zones measuring 66 kilometers wide and 40 kilometers long, deploying 24 vessels and 7 aircraft to continue search operations.

The Coast Guard stated that it has questioned six officials from the shipping company and secured the vessels' automatic identification systems (AIS), voyage data recorders (VDR), and CCTV footage to verify the navigation status at the time of the accident.

(Video reporting: Kim Tae-yong (KNN), Video editing: Lee Hong-myung)