South Korean theater and music student Kim Si-yeon was aboard the ferryboat Sewol on a class trip to an island famous for hiking and tangerine groves when her mother saw a TV news alert of the sinking vessel.
Soon after, at 9:36 a.m. Wednesday, the 17-year-old girl called home, unaware the ship carrying her and 324 high school classmates was capsizing. “There is something very strange going on with this ship. It’s tilting,” her mother recalled her saying, before the cellphone connection broke.
At 10 a.m., they reconnected and the girl said she was in pain, somehow burning her foot in the commotion as the ferry lurched and listed.
“I said to her, ‘Don’t worry. Stay where you are. I am going to come get you,’ ” her mother recalled.
“Mommy, you can’t do that. That’s physically impossible,” Ms. Kim responded. She said she wore a life vest and was getting ready to board a rescue boat. “I will call you back when I get out,” Ms. Kim told her mother before the line went dead for the last time.
As the Sewol sank, there was an agonizingly long window for texts and calls between passengers and loved ones. Students were ordered to stay put even as water rushed inside. Many obeyed. But several survivors said they instead clambered out of the capsized hull to escape.
The 69-year-old ferry captain Lee Jun-seok was arrested Friday, authorities said, as one of his crew confirmed accounts Mr. Lee was among the first to abandon ship. Investigators didn’t appear any closer to understanding why the ship executed a “radical right turn” shortly before it began to sink.
Authorities said 28 people, including four students, were confirmed dead and 268 remained missing, 246 of them students. The ferry, which was carrying 475 passengers, is now submerged, reducing the likelihood of finding more survivors, authorities said.
The maritime disaster, one of worst in South Korea, has spread anger across the country, driven by anguished parents seen on TV and read about in newspapers. Parents were first told Wednesday that all the students were safe. Only hours later was it clear that scores had been trapped inside the ferry.
A school vice principal, Kang Min-gyu, who had escaped the sinking ferry, hanged himself Friday, police said, near the spot where parents had gathered to await news of their missing children. Nearly all of the second-year class from Danwon High School, teenagers dressed in tennis shoes and school uniforms, had set out Tuesday for the four-day trip to Jeju island.
“Please hold me responsible for all of this,” Mr. Kang wrote in a note released by police. “I pushed for the school excursion. Cremate my body and spread my ashes over the ship sinking site. I may become a teacher again in the afterlife for the students whose bodies have yet to be found.”
Cars crowded the narrow street by the entrance to the funeral hall of a hospital near Danwon High School in Ansan, a fast-growing, largely working-class suburb of Seoul. Adults in dark suits and dresses hugged, as students emerged from memorial services Friday sobbing and holding one another.
The annual class trip was designed as a break for students before they began intense preparations for college entrance exams next year. In the past, students flew to the island. Last year’s class was the first to take the 13-hour ferry ride, which added an extra day to the trip.
The high school, which opened in 2005, isn’t among the most competitive schools, academically, but has good sports teams. Its motto: “A happy school with a creative, intelligent education, making our dreams come true together.”
The night before the trip, Ms. Kim and her family celebrated her mother’s birthday at an inexpensive Korean barbecue restaurant the teenager had picked, her family said.
Ms. Kim was happy to stand out from the crowd in oversize glasses and riding a red motor scooter. “She had her own style,” said student Park Seoung-hyeon, a member of a school theater club Ms. Kim ran. She had produced the school’s most recent play, Mr. Park said, and “really got into her roles.”
Ms. Kim’s mother drove her daughter to school Tuesday, but with a car waiting behind them, they didn’t have time for their usual hug goodbye. “Sorry I couldn’t give you a hug,” Ms. Kim said later in a text message.
Ms. Kim was stressed about a dance she and her friends were going to perform for a talent show on the trip. She told her mother she wasn’t happy with the music she had mixed on her computer to accompany the routine, despite attempts to make it better. The teenager began playing guitar with her father while in elementary school, but had shifted to composing digital music.
Few Danwon High School students attended Korea’s top colleges, but Ms. Kim was working hard to get into the media and acting program at Seoul’s elite Sungkyunkwan University, her mother said.
Her sense of style was stoked during annual trips to visit her aunt in Japan, where Ms. Kim shopped for hats and glasses in Tokyo’s most fashionable districts. “She always looks for things that her friends back home don’t have,” said the aunt, Kim Yi-yeon, who flew in to join family members keeping vigil at the pier in Jindo, near where the ferry sank.
In recent months, Ms. Kim’s mother said, her daughter had started growing out her hair and wearing dresses more often. The teenager had recently revealed a romantic relationship with a third-year Danwon student.
Cho Moon-gi, the father of another missing student, said his daughter was still sleeping when he left for work early Tuesday, the morning of the trip. He cuddled the girl, Cho Eun-jung, and kissed her forehead, he said.
The night before, Ms. Cho had packed snacks for her friends and promised her parents she would bring back a box of tangerines. “She is a daughter who always tried to make her parents happy,” said Mr. Cho, who was one of many parents waiting in Jindo for news.
Mr. Cho lost his job last year when the restaurant he ran went bankrupt, he said. His daughter decided she wanted to be a pharmacist so she could contribute financially to the family
Knowing that money was tight, Ms. Cho applied to Danwon High School on her own, and won a scholarship for needy students without the benefit of a so-called cram school, the ubiquitous tutoring operations in South Korea.
“I feel sorry for her whenever I think of that,” said Mr. Cho, who is losing hope his daughter will be found alive. “I thought to myself that I might have to face the worst. But that thought made me crazy. I didn’t want to give up until I see my daughter’s body myself.”
The students were supposed to fly home Friday from Jeju island. Among those waiting in the school gym for any news was Kim Ye-jeon, the son of a Baptist pastor and a Danwon high senior. He had started dating Lee Hye-gyeong, a junior, about four months and the girl, still missing, began regularly attending Sunday church services with him.
“We used to fly to Jeju until two years ago,” he said. “This, this just doesn’t seem real.”
–Min Sun Lee and Jeyup Kwaak contributed to this article.
Write to Yuka Hayashi at yuka.hayashi@wsj.com, In-Soo Nam at In-Soo.Nam@wsj.com, Alexander Martin at alexander.martin@wsj.com and Min-Jeong Lee at min-jeong.lee@wsj.com
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