South Korea to dispatch plane for search operation in sunken vessel near Russia

The South Korean government convened an emergency meeting on Thursday (December 4) in Seoul and decided to send patrol planes and a patrol ship to the accident area as over 30 people are still missing after a South Korean fishing boat sank near Russia.

The vessel 'Oriong-501' sank in the Bering Sea off the coast of Russia's far eastern Chukotka region on Monday (December 1), leaving at least 18 people dead.
 
Officials from the foreign ministry, the defence ministry, the ministry of Oceans and Fisheries as well as the ministry of Public Safety and Security gathered at the government complex on Thursday to discuss countermeasures to deal with the accident.
 
"We decided to dispatch two navy's patrol planes and a coast guard's patrol ship as soon as possible to the site," South Korean Deputy Director-General of the Overseas Koreas and Consular Affairs Bureau, Kwon Ki-hwan, said at a news briefing after the meeting.
 
Eight people - a Russian official, a South Korean crew member, three Filipinos and three Indonesians - have been pulled from the water although the South Korean died of hypothermia, officials in Seoul said.
 
"The number of rescued people is seven and the death toll is 18 as of now," Kwon added.
 
The South Korean government and Sajo Industries, the vessel's operator, said there were 60 people on board, including 11 South Koreans, 13 Filipinos and 35 Indonesians.
 
Artur Rets, the head of the maritime rescue service in Russia's far eastern port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, had said on Monday that records showed 62 people on board.
 
U.S. rescue helicopters joined the search operation for several hours on Tuesday (December 2) but failed to make headway, South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won told a meeting of government officials.
 
The 36-year-old vessel was one of a large fleet of ships operated by Sajo Industries, which owns the world's largest number of tuna fishing vessels, according to its Website.
 
Sajo, founded in 1971 and initially focused on trawling and tuna fishing, has expanded into food and meat processing and runs a golf resort.   Reuters

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