The Keoyoung Sun, a South Korean chemical tanker, capsized off the western Japanese coastline close to islands near Shimonoseki city in the Yamaguchi Prefecture today, March 20th, around 7 a.m. local time.
The ship allegedly anchored due to turbulent seas, when the crew issued a distress call to the Japanese Coast Guard (JCG).
Japanese news outlets claimed nine out of the eleven crew aboard were rescued and brought to a hospital, where eight of them have died. The two South Korean men are unaccounted for as if now, and one of the Indonesian crewmen is reportedly in “stable condition.”
The crew consisted of eight Indonesians, two South Koreans, and one Chinese man. South Korea’s foreign ministry established an overseas citizens protection task force, monitoring the progress of the search and rescue efforts by aircraft and watercraft from the JCG.
