(Seoul) 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 on Saturday.
Posted at 10:45 p.m.
The two men were trapped some 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 getting out of the mine on Friday, helped by rescuers.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol called their return “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 the rescuers.
The two survivors, aged 56 and 62, are in stable condition, authorities said, who believe they made a fire and made a plastic tent inside a tunnel to keep warm.
The survivors “had instant coffee with them and I was told they made it their meal,” said Lim Yoon-sook, a fire official.
They also “survived by drinking the water that fell inside the gallery”, he added.
Their loved ones who no longer believed in it jumped for joy at the time of the reunion.
“I shouted: Dad! declared, beaming, Park Geun-hyeong, the son of one of the two miners. “I told him: you have become a famous character now”.
A niece of the other rescued miner reported that her uncle first asked her who she was, being blindfolded after nearly ten days in the dark.
He laughed when he finally recognized her. “It still seems unreal,” exclaimed M.me Lim.
The news comes amid a period of national mourning in South Korea, after more than 150 people died in a stampede last Saturday during Halloween celebrations in central Seoul.