A miraculous rescue. Two South Korean miners trapped for more than nine days in a collapsed zinc mine miraculously emerged alive Friday from an arduous rescue operation, authorities said Saturday.
The two men were trapped about 190 meters deep in a vertical shaft of the mine, which collapsed on October 26 in Bonghwa, in the east of the country.
Impressive images broadcast by television channels show them leaving the mine on Friday helped by rescuers.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol called his comeback “truly miraculous.” “Thank you and thank you again for coming back safe and sound (when you were) at the crossroads between life and death,” he wrote on Facebook on Saturday, also thanking rescuers.
Survival
The two survivors, ages 56 and 62, are in stable condition, said authorities, who believe they built a fire and made a plastic tent inside a tunnel to keep warm.
The survivors “drank instant coffee with them and told me they made it for their food,” said Lim Yoon-sook, a fire official. They also “survived by drinking the water that fell into the gallery,” he added.
Her loved ones who no longer believed in her jumped for joy at the moment of their reunion.
“I yelled: Dad!” said a smiling Park Geun-hyeong, the son of one of the two miners. “I told him: now you have become a famous person.”
A niece of the other rescued miner reported that her uncle first asked her who she was, as he was blindfolded after nearly ten days in the dark.
He laughed when he finally recognized her. “She still feels unreal,” exclaimed Lim Yoon-sook.
The news comes amid a period of national mourning in South Korea, after more than 150 people were killed in a stampede last Saturday during Halloween celebrations in central Seoul.
Source: BFM TV
