Jeon Je-young continues to play video of the plane with her daughter and 180 other people on board crashing into a wall and bursting into flames at a South Korean airport.
His daughter Mi-sook died on board. He still can’t believe it.
“When I saw the video of the accident, the plane seemed to be out of control. The pilots probably had no choice but to do so. My daughter, who is barely 40 years old, ended up like this. “It’s incredible,” said Jeon, 71.
Mi-sook was a very loving girl, he noted.
On December 21, he brought her some food and next year’s calendar to her house, which became his last brief moment with her.
“She was much nicer than my son, sometimes she would invite me out to eat,” Jeon recalls, showing her latest exchanges with her daughter on her mobile phone.
Read: 179 people die after plane crash in South Korea
The deadliest plane crash in South Korea’s history killed 179 people on Sunday when a passenger plane landed on its nose and skidded off the runway, sparking a fireball at Muan International Airport.
Flight 7C2216, which arrived from the Thai capital Bangkok with 175 passengers and six crew on board, was seen sliding down the runway with no visible landing gear before crashing into navigation equipment and a wall in an explosion of flames and debris.
Only two people, both crew members, survived and were receiving treatment for their injuries.
Pain and anger
Authorities shouted the names of some of those killed in the crash, triggering an explosion of grief and anger among the passengers’ families gathered in the airport’s arrivals area.
They screamed, cried and collapsed on the floor of the terminal where their loved ones had to return home.
Crime scene investigators collected saliva samples from the families for DNA testing to identify the victims.
Jeon’s daughter was returning home after traveling with friends to Bangkok for the Christmas holidays. She leaves behind a devastated family, including her husband and teenage daughter.
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“The water near the airport is not deep. There are softer fields here than this cement track. Why couldn’t the pilot land there?” Jeon asked.
Firefighters reported that the impact of the accident left the plane “almost completely destroyed.”
“Due to two collisions and an explosion, most of the passengers were thrown out of the plane, although fortunately two crew members survived in the tail,” said Yeom Dong-bu, a Muan firefighter who was sent to the scene.
“I used to work in ambulances, so I have seen these kinds of terrible things, like car accidents, but not on this scale,” he added.
Mi-sook was identified by her fingerprints and her family is searching for a funeral home near their city, Gwangju, to transport her body there.
“He was almost home, so he didn’t see the need to call the family (to leave a final message). He thought he was coming home,” Jeon said.
With information from Reuters
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