South Korean Divers Find Body in Sunken Ferry

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/world/middleeast/sewol-ferry-disaster-south-korea.html

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SEOUL, South Korea — Divers found a body on Tuesday inside a ferry that sank 195 days ago off southwestern South Korea, in the country’s worst peacetime disaster in decades, a government task force said.

After the body is recovered and identified, the deceased will become the 295th confirmed victim of the disaster. Nine other people are still missing and presumed dead.

The last body was recovered on July 18, that of a cook, in the ferry’s cafeteria.

The body found Tuesday, badly decomposed, was inside a women’s restroom on the fourth floor of the 6,825-ton ferry Sewol, which sank on April 16, according to a statement issued by the joint task force overseeing the recovery effort. Divers hope to recover the body on Wednesday, the statement said.

With no additional bodies recovered in more than three months, some politicians had called for an end to the search and suggested that the government hoist the ship, which is lying on its side at the sea bottom. The search operation has frequently been interrupted by rapid currents and poor underwater visibility.

But the families of the missing, still camping out on an island near the site of the sinking, want the government to continue the search. They fear that bodies that might still be inside the ship will be lost if it is raised.

When the ferry ran into trouble in April, it was carrying 476 people, mostly high school students. The disaster caused widespread outrage: The ship was overloaded with cargo and the crew was accused of deserting the sinking ship after telling passengers to stay in their cabins.

On Monday, prosecutors asked a judge to sentence the ferry captain, Lee Jun-seok, to death on a murder charge.