Death toll in South Korea ferry disaster rises to 236

Eight more bodies were recovered Saturday from the ferry that sank offSouth Korea last month, reports said, amid concern that some of the missing maynever be found.Seventeen days after the 6,825-tonne Sewol capsized and sank, 236 people have beenconfirmed dead with 66 still unaccounted for, according to Yonhap news agency.Earlier Saturday, the search had been suspended due to fast currents and high waveswhipped up by gusty winds, according to a coastguard spokesman.   Dive teams have been working in challenging and sometimes hazardous conditions.They have to grope their way down guiding ropes to the sunken ship, laying on itsside on the seabed at a depth of 40 metres (132 feet).They have to struggle through narrow passageways and rooms littered with floatingdebris in silty waterPark Seung-Ki, spokesman for the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, said bedding materials from the ship were found as far as 30 kilometres (around 20 miles) fromthe disaster site on Friday. As days go by, personal belongings and debris from the ship have been spottedfurther and further away, fuelling concerns that strong currents may have sweptsome bodies into the open sea.One body was retrieved Friday by a fishing vessel four kilometres away from therecovery site, and another was found two kilometres away on Wednesday.As a precaution, recovery workers put rings of netting around the site days ago.The relatives of those still missing are insisting that all the bodies be recoveredbefore efforts begin to raise the sunken ferry.The Sewol capsized on April 16 with 476 people on board -- more than 300 of themfrom the same Danwon High School in Ansan city, just south of SeoulIt is one of South Korea's worst peacetime disasters but public anger and frustration has been amplified due to greed and irresponsibility being blamed for the poorhandling of the catastrophe.The captain and 14 of his crew have been arrested for being the first to leave theship without helping all passengers to safety.The Sewol's regular captain, who was off duty on the day of the accident, has toldprosecutors that the ferry operator -- Chonghaejin Marine Co -- "brushed aside"repeated warnings that the 20-year-old ship had stability issues following arenovation in 2012.Two Chonghaejin officials were arrested on Friday on charges of having the ferryoverloaded well beyond its legal limit.The ferry owners have also become the focus of an ever-widening probe. The government has come under strong criticism over the initially slow rescueresponse as well as lax safety standards and collusion between industry andregulators, which were partly blamed for the scale of