The death toll from the South Korean Ferry Disaster is 163, with more than 130 passengers still unaccounted for.  Only 174 passengers and crew were rescued, and that was on the first day, last week.  One of the bodies recovered so far might be that of the boy who made the first distress call from the capsizing ship from his mobile phone.

A DNA test has yet to confirm the body’s identity according to South Korean media, but the boy’s parents had checked his body and clothes and concluded he was their son.  Divers report that some of the bodies of teenagers from Danwon High School outside Seoul were found with broken fingers, indicating their desperation to attempt to escape the vessel.  They had been told to stay in their cabins and await rescue instead of to abandon ship.  Divers say they’ve yet to find any air pockets in which kids might have survived.

The Sewol ferry itself was reportedly a disaster in the making.  The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reports that ferry operation Chonghaejin Marine purchased it second hand from a Japanese company in 2012, and added decks to it, raising its center of gravity. Even if the kids were able to get to the Sewol’s 46 lifeboats, Chosun Ilbo reports only one was working properly.

The ship was three-times overloaded, and the cargo was poorly secured.  It’s believed that a sharp turn taken too quickly caused the cargo to shift, tipping over the Sewol.