South Korea miners trapped for 9 days survived on instant coffee powder
- Two men deep underground in a collapsed zinc mine for 9 days ate coffee powder and drank water that fell from the ceiling
- Now rescued, they are expected to make a full recovery; nation’s president said thanks for coming back from life/death crossroads
Two men trapped in a South Korean zinc mine for nine days said they lived on meals of instant coffee powder to stay alive.
The two men, 62 and 56 years old, said they survived by eating instant coffee powder and drinking cave water that fell from the ceiling, fire department officials said, according to The Guardian.
They “had instant coffee mix powder with them, and I was told they had that as a meal”, Lim Yoon-sook, a fire department official said, according to The Guardian. “I’ve been also told they endured by drinking any water that dropped inside the shaft.”
The two men were in a zinc mine around 620 feet underground when the mine collapsed on Bonghwa late on October 26, the newspaper said.
Both men were able to walk out of the cave when they were rescued on November 4, according to the BBC, and they were taken to a local hospital where doctors said that they would make a full recovery. South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that rescuers drilled a hole in the mine and inserted cameras to try and find the men inside the mine.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said that the rescue on November 4 was “truly miraculous”.
“Thank you and thank you again for coming back safely from the crossroads of life and death,” he wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday.
According to the Guardian, Park Geun-hyeong, the son of one of the men trapped in the cave, said he told his father, “you’ve become a famous figure now”.
