SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
Hwang In-yeol and his wife waited seven years to have a child, and then she was born on Oct. 29, 1997. After a ferry disaster in April that killed her and 303 others, the couple waited again for nearly seven months to see Ji-hyeon’s body. The vigil ended Wednesday when divers retrieved their only child’s body on her 17th birthday.
Divers found Ji-hyeon’s body on Tuesday around a toilet in the sunken ship Sewol, but it took one day to pull it up to the surface because of strong currents and its decaying condition. The results of DNA tests released today confirmed the body belongs to Ji-hyeon.
Her body is the first recovered since July 18, raising the official death toll from the April 16 sinking to 295, mostly high school students who were travelling to a southern island for a school trip. Nine others are still missing.
Many Asian cultures, including South Korean, count the age of the newborn baby as 1, and by that method Ji-hyeon would have celebrated her 18th birthday on Wednesday. The entire Korean media reported it as such.
The parents were confident the body was that of their daughter because of the clothes on her, according to volunteer workers helping families of the missing people.
Hwang did not immediately respond to calls, but in a previous interview with The Associated Press he had described Ji-hyeon as a “precious gift.” During their months-long vigil in the gym in Jindo, his wife had hobbled on aching knees every morning to a lighthouse at the island’s Paengmok port and thrown a few spoonful of rice into the sea. She called it breakfast for her daughter, and a prayer that divers will find her body soon.
Hwang, who works for an auto parts manufacturer, then regretted that he couldn’t talk to his daughter enough before the sinking because of his long working hours.
The sinking, one of South Korea’s deadliest disasters in decades, caused nationwide grief and fury, with authorities blaming overloading of cargo, improper storage, untimely rescue efforts and other negligence for the incident.
On Monday, South Korean prosecutors demanded the death penalty for the ferry’s captain and life sentences for three other key crew members, blaming their negligence and abandonment of passengers for the massive loss of life. A local district court is to issue verdicts on the 15 crew members in November.
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