Shipwreck between South Korea and Japan leaves eight people missing.
After 14 others had been rescued, the coast guards of Japan and South Korea were looking for eight crew members from a cargo ship that went down between the two countries on Wednesday.
A Japanese coast guard spokesman told AFP that 14 people had been rescued.
He went on to say, “We don’t know their condition and nationalities yet,” and he didn’t want to be named.
He said that the South Korean coast guard, which was helping with the operation, had saved six of the crew members.
The Jeju Coast Guard informed AFP that eleven of the rescued individuals were “unconscious,” and that the rescued crew members were being transported to the southwestern city of Nagasaki in Japan.
Late on Tuesday evening, the Jin Tian issued a distress call from a location approximately 68 miles (110 km) west of the remote and uninhabited Danjo islands in far southwestern Japan.
According to the Japan Coast Guard, three private ships were in the area and assisted in the rescue of a number of the stranded crew members.
Two ships and a plane from the Japanese coast guard were at the scene, and additional vessels from South Korea and Japan were on their way, according to officials from both nations.
According to the Jeju Coast Guard, the ship’s captain informed South Korean authorities via satellite phone that he and the crew would abandon the sinking vessel in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
After that, contact with the crew was lost.
Hirokazu Matsuno, a spokesman for the Japanese government, said that the coast guard was working with South Korean authorities on the rescue mission.
The accident happened as a lot of Asia was experiencing a cold snap. Some of the Japanese islands closest to the rescue site had daytime temperatures of just three degrees Celsius (37 degrees Fahrenheit).
According to the Japanese coast guard, the 6,651-ton Jin Tian has a Hong Kong registration, and the crew on board included 14 Chinese and eight Myanmar nationals.
After becoming entangled in a typhoon, a cargo ship carrying 6,000 cattle and 43 crew members capsized in 2020 off the coast of southwestern Japan. Two crew members survived.
