▲ Hableány seen in April, 2017

At 9 p.m. local time on May 29th, a small cruise boat 'Hableány' carrying 33 Korean tourists and three tour guides, as well as two Hungarian crew, collided with another vessel on Danube river in Hungary's capital, Budapest. The ship sank only seven seconds after the collision during the rainstorm on Wednesday.

▲ Hableány was heading back to marina before the incident

The boat that sank was near the Margaret Bridge next to the parliament building as part of the sightseeing tour of Budapest before the collision. CCTV footage released by Hungarian police shows a 27-m long Hableány and a much larger tour boat, which is 135-m long Viking Sigyn, traveling at the same direction and colliding near Margaret Bridge.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Korea, seven people have rescued, seven were dead, and another 21 people are currently missing. The rain had led to the strong currents on the Danube, and the rescue teams say that there is a little hope of finding more survivors according to the Hungarian police spokesman Adrian Pal.

▲ Search operations under the Margaret Bridge

Kang Kyung-Wha, speaking at a press conference with Hungary's foreign minister Péter Szijjártó, said that she and her team will not give up their hopes about the possibility of finding other survivors.

The rescue effort continued on the next day with boats, divers, spotlights, and radar scanning along the river, where the temperature of the water was between 10C and 12C(50F-54F). But, the rescue team warned that, as more time passed, the strong currents would carry people further downstream, lessening the chances of finding other survivors. The seven confirmed victims were not wearing life jackets and the three of them were found several kilometers from the site of the collision according to the police.

Some argue that this incident was caused by chronic insensitivity towards the safety of South Korean.

June 1, 2019

by 박선우