Fourteen seamen went missing in a pre-dawn shipwreck off South Korea's south coast Tuesday after a chemical carrier disappeared in rough waters, local maritime police said.
The 13,000-ton freighter, the Eastern Bright, vanished in waters off the port city of Yeosu, about 455 kilometers south of Seoul, after sending an SOS at around 4:20 a.m. to the coast guard, they said.
A Myanmarese seaman was rescued about five hours after the accident but another 14 sailors -- 12 Koreans and two Myanmarese -- remained unaccounted for, they said. The rescued sailor was unconscious and was to be sent to a nearby hospital.
The chemical carrier has yet to be found and the cause of the accident is not known, the police said, adding rescue efforts were being hampered by waves of three to four meters.
The freighter left Yeosu late Monday night and was on its way to Taiwan, carrying 2,000 tons of nitric acid for a South Korea-based logistics company.
The maritime police ruled out the possibility of a chemical spill polluting the waters. "There seems to be no fear of water pollution around the coast as nitric acid is highly volatile," a maritime police officer said.
Earlier this month, South Korea experienced its worst-ever oil spill when an oil tanker leaked 10,500 tons of oil into the waters off South Korea's west coast after colliding with a barge.