A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a vessel with no living crew aboard; it may be a ghostly vessel in folklore or fiction, such as the Flying Dutchman, or a real derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste. The term is sometimes used for ships that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, as well as drifting boats that have been found after breaking loose of their ropes and becoming carried away by the wind or the waves.
The ROKS Cheonan sinking occurred on 26 March 2010, when Cheonan, a Pohang-class corvette of the Republic of Korea Navy, carrying 104 personnel, sank off the country's west coast near Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 seamen. The cause of the sinking remains in dispute, although overwhelming evidence points to North Korea.
ROKS Cheonan (PCC-772) was a Pohang-class corvette of the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN), commissioned in 1989. On 26 March 2010, she broke in two and sank near the sea border with North Korea. An investigation conducted by an international team of experts from South Korea, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Sweden concluded that Cheonan was sunk by a torpedo launched by a North Korean Yeono-class miniature submarine.
Operation Dawn of Gulf of Aden was a naval operation by the Republic of Korea Navy against Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea. The operation was spurred by the pirates' seizure of the South Korean chemical tanker Samho Jewelry. In response, the South Korean government sent a destroyer and 30 naval commandos to retake the ship and rescue its crew. After trailing the tanker for several days and fighting a preliminary engagement that neutralized four of the pirates, the South Korean forces retook the ship by force on January 21, 2011 in a successful boarding action that resulted in the death of eight and the capture of five out of thirteen pirates.
MV Asia South Korea was a Philippines passenger ferry owned by Trans-Asia Shipping Lines that sank off Bantayan Island in Cebu province on 23 December 1999. It was discovered that the number of passengers aboard exceeded the total capacity of the 27-year-old ferry.
The sinking of MVSewol, also referred to as the Sewol Ferry Disaster, occurred on the morning of 16 April 2014, when the passenger/ro-ro ferry was en route from Incheon towards Jeju in South Korea. The South Korean ferry sank while carrying 476 people, mostly secondary school students from Danwon High School. The 6,825-ton vessel sent a distress signal from about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 mi) north of Byeongpungdo at 08:58 Korea Standard Time. In total, 304 passengers and crew members died in the disaster. Of the approximately 172 survivors, more than half were rescued by fishing boats and other commercial vessels that arrived at the scene approximately 40 minutes after the South Korean coast guard.
MV Sewol was a South Korean vehicle-passenger ferry, built and previously operated in Japan. It operated between Incheon and Jeju. On 16 April 2014, Sewol capsized and sank with the loss of 304 passengers and crew.
On 5 May 2014, the cargo ship Zhong Xing 2 and the container ship MOL Motivator collided off Po Toi Island near Hong Kong, resulting in Zhong Xing 2 sinking. All but one of Zhong Xing 2′s 12-man crew were left missing and presumed dead; a rescue operation was conducted by Chinese authorities, and a fishing vessel rescued one man, Zhong Xing 2′s sole survivor.
The following lists events that happened in 2014 in North Korea.
The Cemfjord was a Cyprus-registered cargo ship which foundered in the Pentland Firth off the north-east coast of Scotland on 2 January 2015. Built as the general cargo ship Margareta in 1984, she was converted to carry cement in 1998 and was en route from Aalborg, Denmark to Runcorn, Cheshire, United Kingdom when she capsized in bad weather and sank in 82 metres (270 ft) of water. All eight crew were presumed lost. No bodies were recovered, and the ship has been left as a sea grave.
MV Stellar Daisy was a South Korean-owned very large ore carrier (VLOC) that sank on March 31, 2017 in the South Atlantic off the coast of Uruguay whilst on a voyage from Brazil to China. She was the largest ship, by a factor of over three on gross tonnage, to be lost at sea.
