Elementary student rescued from sea after falling off maritime zip line; operator called it 'common occurrence,' never called 119

An elementary school student fell into the sea while riding a maritime zip line and was not rescued for nearly an hour.

According to JTBC's "Sageon Banjang," a TV crime and incident program, a man identified only as A visited a hotel in Yeosu, South Jeolla Province, with his family on Aug. 15.

The hotel's rooftop features a zip line that runs out over the sea.

It had rained lightly and been windy that morning, but once the rain stopped, A boarded the zip line with his sixth-grade daughter. His wife and younger daughter watched from below and filmed the ride.

According to A, his daughter, who weighs about 50 kilograms, met the operator's weight requirements. But from the start she moved noticeably slower than the other riders and ultimately came to a stop about three-quarters of the way along the course.

Staff sent out a towing device — known as a "majungi" — to pull her to the end. During that process, however, an auxiliary rope connected to the towing device snapped.

A said his daughter was submerged in seawater up to her hips, and that from a distance he could see her body moving sharply up and down and going under the surface.

Staff decided to ride the cable down manually to rescue the child. An employee told A, "We're going to go down manually, but because our weight will be added to the line, the child may go a bit deeper into the water."

The rescue was not swift. "If someone falls in the water, you should launch a boat or call 119, but the operator just said, 'Please wait a little and we'll get her out safely,' and then said they would pull her in manually," A said. It took about an hour before several staff members pulled the child to safety by hauling on the rope attached to her.

A said he was relieved his daughter was not seriously hurt but took issue with how the operator handled the situation. He said the zip line continued operating after the incident without any safety inspection, and that the snapped auxiliary rope was not replaced — staff simply tied the broken ends together and put it back into use. When A asked whether that was acceptable, an operator representative said it was.

The operator told "Sageon Banjang" that riders failing to reach the end point — a situation it called "non-arrival" — is a common occurrence. "Non-arrival is common with zip lines, and because we didn't think it was an accident, we didn't call 119," a representative said. "We can get to them faster than 119 can." The representative also argued that the incident should not be called an accident, saying the child had not fully fallen into the sea but had only been partially submerged.

A rebuffed that reasoning, saying that if non-arrivals are so common, rescues should happen far more quickly. He also said he found it hard to understand how an operator running a maritime zip line could have no rescue boat on standby for emergencies.