By MUAN, South Korea — Outside South Korea’s Muan International Airport, the smell of jet fuel is still in the air, days after a passenger jet belly-landed and skidded off the end of the runway, erupting into a fireball.
Inside the departures terminal, dozens of yellow and beige tents have been set up for relatives to sleep in as rescuers search the wreckage for the bodies of their loved ones. No one wants to leave as the agonizing identification process takes place.
It could take weeks or even months to identify the bodies of the 175 passengers and four crew members who were killed when Jeju Air Flight 2216 from Bangkok came down at around 9 a.m. local time Sunday (7 p.m. ET Saturday).
Astonishingly, two flight attendants at the back of the plane survived, one reportedly asking doctors later “what happened” and “why am I here?”
Lee Dong-Suk, who lost his aunt and uncle in the crash, told NBC News on Monday that he thought the government should work faster to identify the bodies and provide families with more information.
“At first, the government told us that they found the bodies and that they were making efforts towards identifying them. So we waited and waited because they did not tell us how long we had to wait, where to wait and what to do,” he said. “So, it became an endless waiting with no end in sight for us.
