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Lack of guidelines blamed for failure to fully recover remains of Jeju Air crash victims

Published: 30 Apr. 2026, 17:25

An office of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport [YONHAP]

The lack of specific guidelines on the recovery of remains, coupled with insufficient oversight at the scene, led to the failure to fully recover the remains of victims in the 2024 Jeju Air plane crash for more than a year, a government investigation showed Thursday.

The Office for Government Policy Coordination said that the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board also violated related regulations in the course of keeping pieces of the wreckage mixed with remains in burlap bags at unroofed spaces, and failed to respond immediately to requests from bereaved families for a reinvestigation.

Announcing the results of a one-month investigation, the office said it has referred 12 officials for disciplinary measures — four from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, six from the accident investigation board, one from the police and the other from a firefighting agency.

The Jeju Air crash on Dec. 29, 2024, killed 179 passengers and crew members when the jet made an emergency belly landing at Muan International Airport, and erupted into flames after crashing into a concrete mound. It was the deadliest plane crash in Korea's history.

In recent months, remains of the victims were found one after another, more than a year after the crash, after the government launched a reinvestigation into the plane's wreckage in February in an effort to help determine what exactly caused the tragedy that killed 179 people.

Bereaved families expressed outrage that bone pieces and other remains had been left unattended for such a long period of time, some in ton bags or burlap sacks, prompting the land minister to offer an apology and President Lee Jae Myung to order a thorough investigation into how that happened and who is responsible.

The families of the victims of the Jeju Air crash protest in front of the Blue House in central Seoul on March 9. [YONHAP]

A full-scale operation has since been launched to comb through the crash site again and collect any additional remains and items belonging to the victims, with hundreds of additional pieces of remains and other items believed to belong to the victims recovered so far.

“The investigation has confirmed that the remains of the victims were not fully recovered due to insufficient command and oversight by the firefighting and police authorities in a situation where there are no specific guidelines on search and recovery measures in a plane accident," said Kim Young-su, first deputy chief of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, during a press briefing.

Noting that the lack of proper manuals led to bungled initial search and recovery efforts, Kim said the government will have the National Fire Agency and other government offices revise related regulations to prevent similar incidents from occurring again.

Yonhap