As South Korea tries to quickly identify bodies two days after a dramatic Jeju Air crash in southwestern Muan Airport killed 179 passengers and crew members, Taiwan and other countries in the region are going through airport safety features amid concerns.
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00:00Authorities in South Korea are still racing to identify bodies, two days after the shocking
00:11crash of a Jeju Air passenger plane at Muan Airport, the country's worst ever air travel
00:17disaster.
00:19The passenger plane, traveling from Thailand to the airport in South Korea's southwest,
00:24killed 179 people, all but two people on board.
00:34Mourning family members can only pray and wait for all victims to be found, with some
00:40urging officials to hire more people to aid the effort, a test for the country's acting
00:45President Choi Sang-mok, here at a memorial for the victims, who took office less than
00:5148 hours before the crash.
01:09Questions remain about what exactly happened, after the pilot made a Mayday call reporting
01:15a bird strike.
01:17The Boeing 737-800 aircraft then made an emergency belly landing, without its gear
01:23and wheels, skidding and then slamming into a concrete wall, almost 250 metres after the
01:30end of the runway.
01:32Muan Airport was known to have a runway nearly a kilometre shorter than most international
01:38airports.
01:39It really has to be a series of catastrophic events that lead to such a high loss of life.
01:49It is incredibly unusual.
01:52Following the deadly crash, concerns in neighbouring Taiwan arose, over the safety of its own Songshan
01:58Airport.
01:59Though not the country's main air hub, Songshan is right in the capital city, with a runway
02:04that's 2,600 metres long, 200 metres shorter than that at Muan Airport.
02:12But Taiwan's Transport Safety Authority has reassured that Songshan's safety features
02:17are in good order, and explained that the end of the runway is fitted with a crushable
02:22material called Engineered Materials Arresting Systems, or EMAS, designed to stop aircraft
02:29that overrun.
02:30EMAS is a crushed concrete structure, which means that when the aircraft hits the crushed
02:39concrete at a certain speed, the engine and the fuselage won't be damaged.
02:46So the crushed concrete will disintegrate into powder.
02:50The material was installed following a 2004 incident at the airport, where a TransAsia
02:56Airways plane overran the runway, coming just 15 metres short of a barrier.
03:02But aviation experts say that EMAS material may not be enough if aircraft are making emergency
03:08landings at high speeds.
03:17As renewed scrutiny falls upon airport designs and safety, these families in South Korea
03:23are now camped out at the airport, in shock and inconsolable as they wait to be reunited
03:30with their loved ones' remains.
03:32Kama Xu and Joyce Sun for Taiwan Plus.