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The confirmed death toll from South Korea’s ferry disaster rose above 50 today as divers finally found a way inside the sunken vessel.
They quickly discovered more than a dozen bodies at the beginning of a grim recovery effort.
About 250 people are still missing from the ship — the vast majority of them secondary school students who had been on a holiday trip.
On Jindo island near the submerged ferry, 200 police blocked about 100 relatives, who’d been walking on a main road in a bid to reach Seoul’s presidential Blue House to voice their complaints to the president.
The relatives have been staying at a gymnasium on the island, waiting for word of their loved ones.
“The government is the killer,” they shouted as they pushed against a police barricade.
Relatives had earlier blocked Prime Minister Chung Hongwon’s car and demanded a meeting with President Park Geunhye.
The ferry Sewol sank off South Korea’s southern coast on Wednesday, but it took days for divers to get in because of strong currents and bad visibility.
Beginning late on Saturday and continuing today, multiple teams of divers have found various routes into the ferry, discovering bodies in different spots, said coastguard official Koh Myungseok.
The penetration by divers followed the arrest of the captain on Saturday on suspicion of negligence and abandoning passengers.
Two crew members were also taken into custody, including the third mate who a prosecutor said was steering in challenging waters unfamiliar to her when the accident occurred.
The Sewol sank during a trip from port of Inchon to the southern holiday island of Jeju with 476 people on board, including 323 students from Danwon High School in Ansan.
The cause of the sinking remains under investigation.
Sewol captain Lee Joon-seok initially told passengers to stay in their rooms and took at least half an hour to issue an evacuation order.
Captain Lee faces five charges, including negligence of duty and violation of maritime law, and the two arrested crew members each face three related charges.
