More on the Chinese-Korean shipwreck, as promised. Donga.com reports today that the JinSheng (called Jinsung in Korean) arrived in Dalian seven to nine hours late. It was coming from Yantai in Shandong Province.

The Jinsung entered the port at 2:40 p.m. on May 12, China’s state-owned news agency Xinhua reported. This is a different story from the announcement by the Chinese government stating that the ship sailed without being aware of crashing into the Golden Rose to arrive at nearby Yentai City. If it has sailed without knowledge of the collision, which took place at 03:08 a.m. (Chinese time), it should have entered the port at six to seven in the morning.

To discover the whereabouts of Jinsung during the hours is therefore crucial in finding the truth about the accident.

Prior to Xinhua’s news, China’s marine search team under the Chinese Ministry of Transportation reported that the Jinsung did not take any measures after the accident took place, kept sailing to enter the port.

Did the Chinese ship indeed go searching for the Golden Rose and its crew, only to give up? Did it suffer damage that slowed it down? Was it off course to begin with?

The sunken vessel is now resting under 38 meters (about 125 feet) of water, about 61 kilometers (38 miles) southeast of Dalian. Korean rescue divers deployed earlier this week to aid in the search, according to Yonhap News Service, while families of 16 missing crew from the Korean ship are in Yantai to press for a full investigation.

In a briefing on the accident held by the Yantai Maritime Safety Administration (YMSA) later in the day, the YMSA told the crew’s relatives, “Given the type of sinking of the Golden Rose, chances are very low that the missing crew is alive.”
“The South Korean cargo ship may have sunk directly below the sea due to the weight of 6,000 tons of steel products, so chances are high that no air remains inside the ship’s hull,” it added.

“As the temperature of the sea around the Bohai Bay averages 13.6 degrees centigrade, the chances of the missing crew’s survival are close to zero, drifting for two days,” the YMSA said.

I expect the real fallout will come when (or if?) the bodies are discovered.

Previous posts on this:
Did the Chinese Freighter Hit & Run?

Chinese Shipwreck and a Japanese Extradition

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