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Jindo (South Korea) (AFP) - The confirmed death toll from South Korea's ferry disaster crossed 100 on Tuesday, as dive teams, under growing pressure from bereaved relatives, accelerated the grim task of recovering hundreds more bodies from the submerged vessel.

Improved weather conditions and calm seas spurred their efforts, but underwater visibility was still very poor, requiring divers to grope their way blindly though the corridors and cabins of the ferry that capsized and sank last Wednesday.

Nearly one week into the rescue and recovery effort of one of South Korea's worst peacetime disasters, close to 200 of the 476 people who were aboard the 6,825-tonne Sewol -- most of them schoolchildren -- are still unaccounted for.

The official toll stood at 108, with 194 still missing.

The distraught victims' families gathered in the morning at the harbour of Jindo island -- not far from the disaster site -- awaiting the increasingly frequent arrival of boats with the most recently recovered bodies.

In the initial days after the Sewol went down, the relatives' anger was focused on the pace of the rescue effort.

With all hope of finding any survivors essentially extinguished, this has turned to growing impatience with the effort to locate and retrieve the bodies of those trapped.

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Map showing the final course of the South Korean ferry that capsized on April 16 with 476 people on …

- 'I just want my son back' -

"I just want my son back," said the father of one missing student. "I need to be able to hold him and say goodbye. I can't bear the idea of him in that cold, dark place."

The disaster has profoundly shocked South Korea, a proudly modernised nation that thought it had left behind large-scale accidents of this type.

The sense of national grief has been underwritten by an equally deep but largely unfocused anger that has been vented towards pretty much anyone in authority.

Coastguard officials have been slapped and punched, senior politicians -- including the prime minister -- pushed and heckled, and rescue teams criticised for their slow response.

If there is a chief hate figure, it is the ferry's captain, Lee Joon-Seok, who was arrested at the weekend and charged with criminal negligence and abandoning his passengers.

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A relative of a passenger on board capsized South Korean ferry Sewol weeps at an area where family m …

Six members of his crew are also under arrest.

President Park Geun-Hye, who faced a hostile crowd when she met relatives on Jindo last week, has described the actions of Lee and his crew as being "tantamount to murder".

Four of the detained crew were paraded -- heads bowed and faces hidden -- before TV cameras on Tuesday, and asked why only one of the Sewol's 46 life rafts had been deployed.

"We tried to gain access to the rafts but the whole ship was already tilted too much," one of them responded.

The Sewol capsized after making a sharp right turn -- leading experts to suggest its cargo manifest might have shifted, causing it to list beyond a critical point of return.

The large death toll has partly been attributed to the captain's instruction for passengers to stay where they were for around 40 minutes after the ferry ran into trouble.

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A South Korean coastguard boat returns from the accident site with relatives of victims who were on …

By the time the evacuation order came, the ship was listing so badly that escape was almost impossible.

A transcript released Sunday of the crew's final communications with marine transport control illustrated the sense of panic and confusion on the bridge before the ferry sank.

Lee has insisted he acted in the passengers' best interest, delaying the order to abandon ship because he feared people would be swept away and drowned.

-- Tough task for dive teams --

Nearly 750 divers, mostly coastguard and military, are now involved in the recovery operation.

"The weather is better, but it's still very difficult for the divers who are essentially fumbling for bodies in the silted water," a coastguard official told reporters.

A priority for Tuesday was to access the ferry's main dining hall.

"We believe there are many bodies there as the accident took place in the morning when students must have been eating breakfast," the official said.

Of the 476 people on board the Sewol, 352 were students from the Danwon High School in Ansan city just south of Seoul, who were on an organised trip to the holiday island of Jeju.

Giant floating cranes have been at the disaster site off the southern coast for days, but many relatives remain opposed to raising the ferry before all the bodies have been removed.

The United States said it was sending a salvage ship, the USNS Safeguard, to help if required.

Ahead of President Barack Obama's visit to Seoul later this week, a US official said showing support to ally South Korea in a "very heartbreaking situation" would form "a big part of his trip".

Death toll in Korea ferry disaster tops 100

Nearly one week into the rescue and recovery effort, close to 200 people remain unaccounted for.
Growing impatience

Seoul (AFP) - North Korea could well be preparing to carry out a fourth nuclear test, South Korea said Tuesday, citing increased activity at its main test site just days ahead of a visit to Seoul by US President Barack Obama.

"Our military is currently detecting a lot of activity in and around the Punggye-ri nuclear test site," defence ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok told a press briefing.

Kim stressed that North Korea's nuclear weapons programme was at a stage where it could conduct a test "at any moment" once the order was given by the leadership in Pyongyang.

North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests -- in 2006, 2009 and 2013 -- all at the Punggye-ri site in the northeast of the country.

Kim declined to give details of the monitored activity, but cautioned that it may be no more than a "deception tactic" to raise tensions ahead of Obama's visit which is due to begin on Friday.

"We are thinking of possibilities that the North may stage a surprise nuclear test or just pretend to stage a nuclear test," Kim said.

Obama is visiting Seoul as part of an Asia tour, and there has been widespread speculation that the North may stage a provocation to coincide with the trip.

Kim said the South Korean and US militaries were closely sharing intelligence and Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff had set up a special task force in case Pyongyang goes ahead with an underground detonation.

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Map showing North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test site, where South Korean military has detected …

On Monday, Pyongyang slammed Obama's upcoming trip as a "dangerous" move that would escalate military tension and bring the "dark clouds of a nuclear arms race" over the Korean peninsula.

Several analysts said they were sceptical that North Korea would carry out a test at the current time, and said Pyongyang was just seeking to rattle a few cages.

-- Slap in the face for China? --

Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said a test now would risk permanently alienating the North's only major ally and chief economic benefactor, China.

"It would be a huge slap in the face for China and North Korea may not feel confident enough to deal with the backlash from Beijing," Yang said.

A nuclear test would extinguish any chance of a resumption of six-country talks on North Korea's nuclear programme that China has been pushing for.

Other parties to the stalled discussions -- most notably a sceptical South Korea and the US -- insist Pyongyang must first make a tangible step towards denuclearisation.

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A North Korean flag flutters in the propaganda village of Gijungdong as seen from South Korea on Mar …

"The diplomatic backlash from another nuclear test might be hard for the North to cope with," agreed Kim Yong-Hyun, a North Korean expert at DongGuk University.

"I think this is more likely North Korea posturing to get some international attention," Kim said.

In a March 21 post based on recent satellite images of Punggye-ri, the closely-followed 38 North website of the Johns Hopkins University's US-Korea Institute said there were no indicators of a new test being conducted "in the next few months."

The North warned at the end of March that it would not rule out a "new form" of nuclear test after the UN Security Council condemned its latest series of medium-range missile launches.

Experts saw this as a possible reference to testing a uranium-based device or a miniaturised warhead small enough to fit on a ballistic missile.

-- Fourth test a 'game-changer' --

"If North Korea goes ahead with another nuclear test as it has publicly warned, it will be a game changer," South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se said Monday.

Warning Pyongyang that it was playing an "unwinnable game" against the international community, Yun said the world would not tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Last year, the North restarted a plutonium reactor that it had shut down at its Yongbyon nuclear complex in 2007 under an aid-for-disarmament accord.

The Yongbyon reactor is capable of producing six kilograms (13 pounds) of plutonium a year -- enough for one nuclear bomb

Pyongyang is currently believed to have enough plutonium for as many as six bombs, after using part of its stock for at least two of its three atomic tests to date.

It is still unclear whether the 2013 test used plutonium or uranium as its fissile material.

A basic uranium bomb is no more potent than a basic plutonium one, but the uranium enrichment path holds various advantages for the North, which has substantial deposits of uranium ore.

Uranium enrichment carries a far smaller footprint than plutonium and can be carried out using centrifuge cascades in relatively small buildings that give off no heat.

South Korea's military has detected a significant step up in activity at Pyongyang's main test site.
Obama to visit Seoul this week

Jindo (South Korea) (AFP) - The confirmed death toll from South Korea's ferry disaster rose sharply to more than 120 Tuesday as divers speeded up the grim task of recovering bodies from the submerged ship and police took two more of its crew into custody.

Better weather and calm seas spurred their efforts but underwater visibility was still very poor, forcing divers to grope their way blindly though the corridors and cabins of the ferry that capsized and sank last Wednesday.

Nearly one week into one of South Korea's worst peacetime disasters, close to 200 of the 476 people who were aboard the 6,825-tonne Sewol -- most of them schoolchildren -- are still unaccounted for.

The official toll stood at 121, with 181 still missing.

- 'I just want my son back' -

Distraught families of victims gathered in the morning at the harbour on Jindo island -- not far from the disaster site -- awaiting the increasingly frequent arrival of boats with bodies.

In the initial days after the Sewol went down, their anger was focused on the pace of the rescue effort.

South Korea ferry tragedy: Massive operation to re …Play Video

With all hope of finding any survivors essentially gone, this has turned to growing impatience with the effort to locate and retrieve the bodies of those trapped.

"I just want my son back," said the father of one missing student. "I need to be able to hold him and say goodbye. I can't bear the idea of him in that cold, dark place."

The disaster has profoundly shocked South Korea, a proudly modernised nation that thought it had left behind large-scale accidents of this type.

The sense of national grief is accompanied by an equally deep but largely unfocused anger that has been vented towards pretty much anyone in authority.

Coastguard officials have been slapped and punched, senior politicians -- including the prime minister -- pushed and heckled, and rescue teams criticised for their slow response.

If there is a chief hate figure, it is the ferry's captain Lee Joon-Seok, who was arrested at the weekend and charged with criminal negligence and abandoning his passengers.

View gallery

The orange sun begins to set above searchers and divers looking for bodies of passengers believed to …

Six members of his crew are also under arrest and prosecutors said two more were taken into police custody on Tuesday.

President Park Geun-Hye, who faced a hostile crowd when she met relatives on Jindo last week, has described the actions of Lee and his crew as being "tantamount to murder".

Four of the detained crew were paraded -- heads bowed and faces hidden -- before TV cameras on Tuesday, and asked why only one of the Sewol's 46 life rafts had been deployed.

"We tried to gain access to the rafts but the whole ship was already tilted too much," one of them responded.

The Sewol capsized after making a sharp right turn -- leading experts to suggest its cargo manifest might have shifted, causing it to list beyond a critical point of return.

The large death toll has partly been attributed to the captain's instruction for passengers to stay where they were for around 40 minutes after the ferry ran into trouble.

View gallery

Map showing the final course of the South Korean ferry that capsized on April 16 with 476 people on …

By the time the evacuation order came, the ship was listing so badly that escape was almost impossible.

A transcript released Sunday of the crew's final communications with marine transport control illustrated the sense of panic and confusion on the bridge before the ferry sank.

Captain Lee has insisted he acted in the passengers' best interest, delaying the order to abandon ship because he feared people would be swept away and drowned.

- Tough task for divers -

Nearly 750 divers, mostly coastguard and military, are now involved in the operation.

"The weather is better, but it's still very difficult for the divers who are essentially fumbling for bodies in the silted water," a coastguard official told reporters.

A priority for Tuesday was to access the ferry's main dining hall.

"We believe there are many bodies there as the accident took place in the morning when students must have been eating breakfast," the official said.

Of the 476 people on board the Sewol, 352 were students from the Danwon High School in Ansan city just south of Seoul, who were on an organised trip to the holiday island of Jeju.

Among the bodies recovered so far were those of three foreign nationals -- believed to be a Russian and two Chinese.

Giant floating cranes have been at the disaster site off the southern coast for days, but many relatives remain opposed to raising the ferry before all the bodies have been removed.

In a move to reassure Russia’s neighbors, the United States will send some 600 paratroopers to Poland and the Baltics starting tomorrow as part of an open-ended military commitment prompted by Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.

“I can announce today that a company-size contingent of paratroopers from the U.S. Army Europe's 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team airborne, which is based in Vicenza, Italy, will arrive in Poland tomorrow to begin exercises with Polish troops,” Rear Admiral John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters at his daily briefing.

Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will get 150 American troops each. The full deployment will be complete “by the end of this weekend, maybe Monday,” Kirby said.

Even when those U.S. forces rotate back, new ones will take their place for new exercises throughout the rest of 2014, “but beyond that, it could go beyond the end of this year," Kirby said. "We just don't know. We're just going to have to see how it goes.”

And the exercises “very well could” expand to other NATO allies, Kirby said. “But right now it's going to start with those four countries.”

“Since Russia's aggression in Ukraine, we have been constantly looking at ways to reassure allies and partners,” he said. “These exercises were conceived and added onto the exercise regimen as a result of what's going on in Ukraine.”

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Crew members of Belgian minehunter Belis march towards their ship to set sail together with four oth …

Kirby underlined that one goal of the deployment was to highlight the U.S. commitment, under Article 5 of the NATO charter, to treat an attack on a member of the alliance as an attack on the United States itself.

“The message is to the people of Poland and Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia that the United States takes seriously our obligations under Article 5 of the NATO alliance even though these aren't NATO exercises,” he said.

“And I think if there's a message to Moscow, it is the same exact message, that we take our obligations very, very seriously on the continent of Europe,” Kirby said. “The kind of work that we're going to be doing is real infantry training. And that's not insignificant.”

The deployment could be large enough to reassure American allies nervously watching Russia, which gobbled up Ukraine’s strategic Crimean peninsula after a pro-Western government seized power in Kyiv and has hinted at broader designs on Ukrainian territory. But it also appears to be small enough that Moscow will not regard it as an escalation.

Related video

U.S. sending troops to Eastern Europe

In response to Moscow's actions in Ukraine, 600 paratroopers will be deployed in an open-ended commitment.
Reassuring allies