Fishing Boat Capsizes Off Jeju, Two Crew Missing

A 29-ton coastal longline fishing vessel capsized about 65 kilometers northwest of Chagwido Island off Jeju on 05 Oct 2026, leaving two crew members missing, the Jeju Korea Coast Guard said. The report was received at around 3:04 a.m. local time. The vessel, named Aho and registered in Sacheon, Gyeongsangnam-do, had 11 crew members aboard: one Korean captain, nine Indonesian nationals and one Vietnamese national. The original departure report had listed only eight crew members, and authorities later confirmed three additional people had boarded without being recorded. A nearby fishing vessel rescued nine crew members, eight Indonesian and one Vietnamese national, who were found suffering from hypothermia but in stable condition. The Korean captain and one Indonesian crew member remain unaccounted for. A Coast Guard helicopter reached the scene around 4:28 a.m., deployed aerial rescuers and checked for signals inside the capsized vessel, but has not located the missing pair. Search efforts involve nine vessels in total, including national fisheries guidance ships, Coast Guard patrol boats, two helicopters, one aircraft, one naval vessel, one vessel from a related agency and three private fishing boats. Conditions at the site include northwesterly winds of 12–14 meters per second and wave heights of about 2 meters. The Coast Guard said it will investigate both the cause of the capsizing and the discrepancy between the reported and actual number of crew on board.