Five children, including the youngest, 3 years old, but also mothers, husbands, wives and grandchildren, are the 179 victims of the plane crash in South Korea, many of whom are still waiting to be identified.
Most of them were tourists returning home on Jeju Air flights after a Christmas trip to Thailand. None of the 175 passengers survived the plane crash, the worst to hit South Korea since 1997. Four crew members also died and only two survived.
Many are unrecognizable due to injuries sustained in the crash, and only a few dozen have been identified through fingerprints. Desperate relatives are angry with authorities, frustrated by the time it has taken to identify their loved ones, the BBC reported. All the relatives, hundreds of families, have gathered at the airport in Korea, where they are waiting for phone calls or information about their loved ones.
"I can't believe the whole family just disappeared," said a man waiting, saying his nephew and two sons were on the flight after going to celebrate their college entrance exam. With him, amid screams of pain and despair, were hundreds of other people.
A temporary morgue has been set up inside the airport, while vans are lined up outside to pick up the bodies one by one as they are being identified, local authorities reported. Among the passengers on board the plane were 173 South Koreans and two Thais, 82 were male and 93 female, aged between three and 78.
All of them probably fully understood what was happening as shown by the message sent by one of the passengers to a family member in those terrifying minutes. “I have my last words to say,” the text read, referring to the fact that the birds had become stuck in the plane’s engine.