South Korean diver's harrowing diary of grim search for bodies inside Sewol

“Started search and touched a wall. Groped along the wall ... moved along further. Felt a body.”

It’s a grim diary entry for a harrowing job – the recovery of hundreds of bodies, most of them schoolchildren, from the cold, dark interior of the submerged South Korean ferry Sewol that sank more than three weeks ago.

A diver who worked on the rescue and recovery operation for nearly all that time kept a  journal that outlines, in stark detail, the physical and psychological demands placed on the teams, which also suffered a fatality during the search.

It follows the progression of the operation, from the early optimism that some passengers might be found in air pockets, to the tragic realisation that there were no survivors beyond the 172 who escaped before the ship fully capsized. “My mind is totally occupied by one thought – find anyone still alive,” the journal begins on April 19, three days after the 6,825-tonne Sewol went down.

Of the 476 on board, 325 were children from the same high school, on an organised trip to the southern resort island of Jeju.