Frantic Calls Made by Students Aboard Sunken South Korean Ferry Revealed

As the death toll passes 100, more and more details are being discovered regarding what happened on board Wednesday as the sinking South Korean ferry, Sewol, began to go under.

"Save us! We're on a ship and I think it's sinking," Yohnap news agency reports, as quoted by Fox News. The cry for help was made by a boy, still missing, to emergency dispactchers.

This is believed to be the first distress call made by someone on board, and one that was later followed by more than 20 other phone calls.

Initially, the connection was routed to fire officials and only forwarded to the coast guard after two minutes. Fox News says that a fire service official requested to speak to the captain, to which the young boy responded, "Do you mean teacher?" The clarification was made because in the Korean language, the pronuciation of "Captain" and "Teacher" is similar.

The boy, with the last name of Choi, was one of 476 warm bodies on board, 339 of which were high school children and teachers on a holiday trip. After emergency responders rushed to the scene, only 174 passengers and crew were rescued with the present death toll at 113.

To date, there are still over 200 people, mostly children missing.

Crew Collapsed and Failed Their Passengers

One of the first people rescued by responders was 69-year-old Sewol ferry captain Lee Joon-seok. The captain, whom the public has blamed for abandoning the ship, was not at the helm when the ferry started listing.

Joon-seok, along with other crew members have been arrested on charges of negligence and "excessive change of course without slowing down," writes the Daily Mail.

The transcript of voyage between vessel officers and traffic officials highlight the chaos, confusion and indecision of crew members resulting in the magnitude of unrescued passengers.

The Wall Street Journal writes, "According to the transcripts, the Jindo Vessel Traffic Service instructed the crew to get passengers ready for evacuation as other boats rushed to save them. But crew members told traffic controllers that their attempts to inform passengers were stymied by a faulty announcement system."