Survivor Found in Seoul Rubble After 9 1/2 Days

A 21-year-old student was pulled alive and well from a collapsed department store today after miraculously surviving 9 1/2 days under tons of rubble.

“Save me. Please save me. Water. Quickly,” rescuers quoted Choi Myong Suk as saying in a faint voice that alerted them to life in the remains of the Sampoong Department Store, where at least 151 people died after the complex collapsed June 29.

Korean television broadcast the rescue scene live as workers using torches and power drills cut through concrete slabs and pulled Choi free in less than two hours.

Choi, who worked part time selling children’s shoes on the second floor, was leaving a restaurant on the first basement floor when he felt the building begin to shake, then crumble.

“I started to run, and then the building collapsed,” he told reporters. “I yelled to see if others were around, and others also yelled.”

He said he had been forced to squat in a space four feet wide the entire time, had nothing to eat and survived on rainwater that seeped through the wreckage. He said he could smell rotting bodies around him.

“When I was too hungry, I ripped a bit of a box to eat,” he said from his hospital bed. “I thought I was trapped for maybe five days at most. I slept when I got sleepy. What was most difficult was that, when it wasn’t raining, there wasn’t any water.

“I thought of my parents, my friends. I did think that I would die. There were others around me, but they are dead. There was a woman next to me, but she died. Before she died, she said she would go first.”

The spot where Choi was found, in the center of the debris, was considered one of the least likely places for survivors.

Dr. Kim Min Chul said Choi was dehydrated but his blood pressure and other vital signs were normal, and he could be released from the hospital in about a week. After being reunited with his parents, Choi said his only wishes were for food and a cola.

As rescuers struggled to reach Choi, his father and uncle, both volunteer rescue workers, and his mother rushed to the scene. The parents appeared to be almost in shock.

“I thought, is this a dream, or is this real?” his mother said.

“I feel like I could fly,” said his father, Choi Bong Ryul, 52, still wearing his hard hat.

The younger Choi said he had become frustrated several times during his more than nine-day ordeal as he heard rescue workers nearby. “They would dig, and go away, dig, and go away,” he said. “Then, there was a bang, and there was light. I yelled out, ‘Help me! Help me!’ ”

Rescuers said they heard Choi calling for help while working on an early shift in torrential rain to retrieve a body.

“As we tried to cut through a concrete slab, we heard a cry,” rescue worker Han Sang Kyu told reporters.

“When we shined a torch through the piles of concrete, Choi was there, his head drenched with water and asking to be rescued.”

The last people pulled alive from the wreckage were 24 cleaners who were rescued from a largely intact basement room 7 1/2 days ago. A woman found alive Sunday died in a hospital two hours later.

About 400 family members of people still missing tried to march to the disaster site today after Choi’s rescue. Stopped by a line of police a block from the store, the marchers beat them with umbrellas, sticks and their fists, chanting, “Find the missing!” and “We want a president who cares about lives!”

Torrential rain continued to badly hamper workers at the site.

Shoddy construction and negligence of safety standards are being blamed for the disaster.