136 More Bodies Found for 2 Days

The National Institute of Scientific Investigation (NISI) and a forensic medical team of Kyoung-pook National University, searching for the victims of the Daegu subway blaze, identified 57 more bodies on Tuesday after finding 79 bodies on Monday. Accordingly, the death toll could rise to more than 190.

With the additional 55 bodies only in the sixth carriage on Tuesday, 136 more bodies have been found through the exhumation work for 2 days since Monday. When adding 46 bodies retrieved by police at the accident site, the estimated death toll stands at 182.

Lee Won-tae, head of the management team of the death at the NISI, held an explanation meet at the Daegu Joongangro subway station at 4 pm Tuesday with the families of the missing and the bereaved families on hand, saying “We have done 90% of the identification inside the 1080 train. We have found 55 bodies in the sixth carriage, 50 in the fifth, 13 in the fourth, 2 in the third, 7 in the second, and 1 in the first. So, the total of the bodies found for 2 days reaches 136, including 8 in the hospital. A NISI official said, “As the close exhumation work is highly likely to identify more bodies seriously damaged, the death toll will exceed 190.”

The identification team had a trouble arranging the bodies tangled with the ones of mere bones.

Yoon Chang-ryuk, a professor of forensic medicine at Chosun University, said “I have been to nearly every catastrophe in the country for the last 20 years, but the condition of the bodies this time is the worst-ever.” He added that even after the work is done, there would be a lot of bodies unidentified. Particularly, half of 50 bodies from the fifth carriage became ashes after burning in the superheat at over 1.000’c for 3 hours or longer. Therefore, collecting the tissue for the DNA analysis was reported to be very difficult.

In the meantime, with the number of the missing reported to the police standing at 320 until Tuesday, the life or death of 184 is yet to be known even if considering the 136 bodies found so far. Police and the Daegu authorities claimed that the number must have included the missing irrelevant to the accident, while the families refuted that they have circumstantial evidences through the record of the 119 phone calls and the confirmation record of the location of mobile phones at the moment of the accident.