STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
South Korea has begun days of mourning after one of the worst aviation disasters in the country's history.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
A plane's landing gear failed to deploy and it skidded off a runway and crashed into a wall. Of 181 people on board, only two emerged alive.
INSKEEP: NPR's Anthony Kuhn is at the scene of the disaster. Hey, there, Anthony.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: What are you seeing?
KUHN: Well, I'm in the departures hall of the Muan International Airport in South Jeolla Province, about 180 miles south of Seoul. And right in front of me are rows of tents to shelter the passengers' families. The Red Cross, church groups, volunteer groups are all here providing food and counseling. And now that all the people have been accounted for and it's clear that there were only two survivors, the focus is on taking care of the bereaved and digging the facts out about how this crash happened.
INSKEEP: Yeah, which always takes a long time with aviation disasters. What are you hearing from family members?
KUHN: Well, I don't know if you can hear it right now, but there are sobs, wails, anguished cries coming out from the tents. There's also frustrating - there's frustration at the waiting that people have to do. There's disbelief at official explanations. Just to give you an example, family members and officials have been meeting here throughout the day discscussing how to deal with the aftermath of the crash. And suddenly, this morning, a middle-aged man named Kim Yong Han (ph) started yelling in frustration, sounded like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KIM YONG HAN: (Souting in Korean).
KUHN: So Mr. Kim then explained to everybody that he had traveled with a group of 18 people to Thailand, and they returned to South Korea without him, and he lost nine relatives, including three close family members. Let's hear him again.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HAN: (Speaking Korean).
KUHN: He said, "when I parted with my family on the last day of the trip, I had no idea I would end up here. Out of the four in my family, out of 18 in the group, I'm the only one that survived. Why? Why do I have to bear this burden of pain?" Now, aviation officials have said that the pilot reported that the plane hit a bird, and Mr. Kim was angry and upset because he just couldn't believe or accept that this would be enough to cause the crash.
INSKEEP: What else are you hearing from family members?
KUHN: Well, right now, their first concern is reclaiming their families members' bodies. At present, about 146 of the 179 victims have been identified. The problem is that only five of those bodies are relatively intact because of the force of the collision. Authorities say they have recovered over 600 body parts and only after those parts are matched with the right bodies will they be returned to their families.
INSKEEP: Amazing that two people survived. What information is available about the cause?
KUHN: Investigators are really busy looking at control tower data, taking black box data recorders back to Seoul. The country is going to check all the Boeing 737-800 airplanes. There's so many factors to be examined, and it could take a long time.
INSKEEP: NPR's Anthony Kuhn. Thanks for your reporting from the scene. Really appreciate it.
KUHN: Thank you, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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