At 2 p.m. on the 25th, the situation room of the Central Regional Korea Coast Guard received a report that a fishing boat, a passenger ship, and a moored warship had collided.
The Central Regional Korea Coast Guard and the Incheon Korea Coast Guard urgently dispatched rescue teams and inshore rescue boats, and asked vessels sailing nearby to assist with the rescue.
The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries issued a "serious" level ship accident crisis alert and activated the Central Accident Management Headquarters. The Ministry of Science and ICT issued a "serious" level GPS signal jamming crisis alert and dispatched a GPS investigation team to the scene.
As missing and injured people occurred during the passenger evacuation, the Korea Coast Guard and the Ministry of National Defense deployed all available maritime rescue personnel.
The accident situation kept getting worse. A fire broke out in an electric vehicle loaded on the passenger ship. The Korea Coast Guard fought the onboard fire while sending helicopters to rescue people adrift and those isolated on board. At sea, rescue boats were mobilized to search for the missing and rescue those adrift.
They also had to contain oil spilled into the sea. The Korea Marine Environment Management Corporation (KOEM) deployed four pollution control vessels to install an oil fence and stop the spread of the oil slick.
This was a simulated scenario for the READY Korea drill conducted near Incheon Port that day. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) held the READY Korea drill at sea near Incheon Port that day jointly with 29 related agencies.
The READY Korea drill is an exercise in which the public and private sectors together check disaster response systems to prepare for large-scale and complex disasters. Considering that maritime risk factors such as sea fog increase in winter, the day's drill set a complex disaster scenario that could occur near a port. "We assumed a situation in which ships in the harbor collide due to sea fog and GPS jamming, causing an electric vehicle fire on the passenger ship's deck, the spill of fuel oil from a 120-ton warship, and numerous casualties during evacuation," a Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) official said.
Minister Yoon Ho-jung of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) said, "The government will put the people's lives and safety first and will strive to minimize casualties through initial responses so thorough they may seem excessive to various disasters and accidents."