Terrible plane crash in South Korea: at least 124 dead, dozens of missing presumed dead

A passenger plane burst into flames Sunday after it skidded off a runway at a South Korean airport and slammed into a concrete fence when its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy, killing at least 124 people, officials said, in one of the country's worst aviation disasters.
The National Fire Agency said rescuers raced to pull people from the Jeju Air passenger plane carrying 181 people at the airport in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) south of Seoul. The Transport Ministry said the plane was a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet that was returning from Bangkok and that the crash happened at 9:03 a.m. local time.
At least 124 people — 57 women, 54 men and 13 others whose genders weren’t immediately identifiable — died in the fire, the fire agency said. The death toll is expected to rise further as the rest of the people aboard the plane remain missing about six hours after the incident.
Emergency workers pulled out two people, both crew members, to safety, and local health officials said theyremain conscious. The fire agency deployed 32 fire trucks and several helicopters to contain the fire. About 1,560 firefighters, police officers, soldiers and other officials were also sent to the site, it said.
Footage of the crash aired by YTN television showed the Jeju Air plane skidding across the airstrip, apparently with its landing gear still closed, and colliding head-on with a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility. Other local TV stations aired footage showing thick plumes of black smoke billowing from the plane, which was engulfed in flames.