A family member of a victim of the 2024 Jeju Air crash has identified personal belongings found at the crash site more than a year after the disaster, believing them to belong to his daughter.
Kim Seong-cheol, an official with a bereaved families’ association, said Wednesday that a necklace and a pair of earrings were recovered during a search operation at Muan International Airport, according to Yonhap News Agency.
“I knew immediately it was my daughter’s necklace,” Kim said, adding that the item matched one she had worn in photos taken during the trip. The earrings were also familiar, having been shared between his wife and daughter.
The Jeju Air flight crash on Dec. 29, 2024, at Muan Airport killed 179 of the 181 people on board after the Bangkok-origin flight attempted a belly landing without deploying its landing gear and struck a concrete structure.
Kim’s wife and daughter were among those killed in the crash.
The discovery comes about one year and four months after the accident, during renewed search efforts aimed at recovering remains and personal effects that had not been found earlier.
Kim said he had struggled with the lack of closure as few remains or belongings had been recovered in the initial search. “There were times I thought I had to let go,” he said, describing the moment he confirmed the items as overwhelming.
Authorities said the latest search operation recovered 42 additional sets of remains and 43 personal items on Tuesday, bringing the three-day total since April 13 to 117 sets of remains and 95 belongings.
The renewed search follows an earlier reassessment by the Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport and the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board, which identified 74 sets of remains belonging to 44 victims from previously collected materials. The findings prompted a full-scale resumption of recovery efforts.
This story was written with the assistance of AI. — Ed.
hnpark@heraldcorp.com
