The Man Who Showed the World South Korea’s Deadly Plane Crash

Asia Pacific|The Man Who Showed the World South Korea’s Deadly Plane Crash

On the morning that the ill-fated Jeju Air flight was headed to its destination in southwestern South Korea, Lee Geun-young was near the airport, getting ready to open a restaurant serving mud-flat octopus, a local delicacy.

Mr. Lee’s restaurant, along a road about 330 yards from Muan International Airport where the plane was about to land, has a clear view of the southern end of the runway, close to the water. Mr. Lee, 48, recalled that it was a beautiful, sunny morning, and that he had seen birds at a nearby beach.

In half an hour, Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 would crash, bursting into flames after striking a concrete structure at the end of a runway, killing all but two of the 181 people on board. It was the worst air disaster ever on South Korean soil.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Lee described how he had first been alerted to the plane’s approach when he heard loud sounds while working in the kitchen and noticed it flying low over his restaurant. Mr. Lee shot videos that were among the first the world saw of the crash, as well as that of firefighters rushing to put out the blaze. He talked about the challenge of dealing with the shock of what he had seen.

The transcript of this interview has been trimmed and edited for clarity.

‘There was something definitely wrong with the plane.’

Around 8:57 a.m., I heard bangs. They sounded like incomplete combustion from motorbikes but louder and unfamiliar. I often hear guns being fired to chase away the birds, as well as noise from different construction work currently going on for runway expansion, road expansion, bullet train construction and such, as part of what I think is a project for a special zone surrounding the airport. But never have I heard that kind of banging noise. I thought it was strange, so I left my kitchen and went outside to the restaurant parking lot and looked up at the sky.

I saw the airplane. It was above my restaurant instead of over the runway. And the plane was tilted a bit to the right. It looked to me like the plane was about to make a landing, only toward my restaurant rather than toward the runway. I see planes over the runway frequently, including ones used for practices, and have a feel for the altitude when planes are about to land. But I have never, before this time, seen a plane fly so low and over my restaurant at that. It felt very low. I thought that was strange and went to the back of my restaurant and watched the back of the plane.