TORONTO – Text messages reportedly sent by students on board a sinking South Korea ship that circulated on social media Wednesday and went viral may not be real, according to police.
READ MORE: Fears rise for 287 still missing more than 24 hours after ferry sinks
Nine people have been confirmed dead, and nearly 300 of the 475 people on board—including 325 students on a school trip to a tourist island—are still missing after a ferry flipped onto its side and sank in cold waters off the southern coast of South Korea.
In a statement to national news agency Yonhap News, the Cyber Terror Response Center at the National Police Agency said Thursday that they had checked cellphone use logs of the students missing and concluded that none of those on the vessel had sent any text or made calls after the ferry sank.
“Even before checking phone logs, we’d confirmed that individuals behind a lot of other texts were not among the missing,” a police official told Yonhap. “We will hunt down the people who wrote these messages and will sternly punish them for hurting the families and causing confusion in the search efforts.”
VIDEO: Hundreds missing in South Korea ferry disaster
The messages spread quickly through Twitter and Facebook. Local regional police are now reportedly trying to determine who created the messages and that those are found responsible will face criminal charges, including for defamation and obstruction of justice by deception.
READ MORE: 10 heartbreaking photos as South Korea ferry sinks
Global News has contacted the National Police Agency to independently confirm whether any of the text messages that were circulated online were in fact sent. A response was not yet received at the time of publishing.
The search continues
Officials think it’s likely many of the missing may still be on the submerged ferry, but strong currents are preventing divers from getting inside.
A crew member of the South Korea ferry that sank more than a day ago says an evacuation order was not issued right away because officers on the bridge were trying to stabilize the vessel after it started to lean.
READ MORE: Evacuation order came late for many on South Korean ferry
The captain’s first instructions were for passengers to put on life jackets and stay put.
An evacuation was not ordered until 30 minutes later.
With files from The Associated Press
Comments