At least 9 people were confirmed dead and 287 were still missing after the South Korean passenger ship SEWOL carrying 475 people, mostly high school students, capsized in waters off the country's southwest coast on Wednesday, Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday.

The authority said 179 people were rescued and 287 others remained unaccounted for.

Reports say the ship's captain was one of the first to leave the vessel.

The Coast Guard official said they have been questioning the captain and other crew members on what went wrong with the ship.

The 69-year-old captain, surnamed Lee, told reporters, "I am sorry for passengers and family members of the missing." 

The Chinese embassy said Thursday that two Chinese citizens were on board the capsized South Korean ship, but it was still seeking clarification from South Korean authorities.

The search for hundreds of missing passengers continues. 169 boats, 29 aircraft and 555 Navy, Coast Guard and other divers have been mobilized for the operations, officials said.

However, the search operations are further complicated by low visibility, low temperature and fast currents.

"We carried out underwater searches five times from midnight until early in the morning, but strong currents and the murky water pose tremendous obstacles," said Kang Byung-kyu, minister for security and public administration, during a press briefing. "We will do our best."

Two salvage cranes are expected to arrive at the scene on Friday to raise the sunken vessel, the minister said.

The doomed ship deviated from a government-recommended route, said Coast Guard officials.

The ferry's original captain, who had gone on vacation, was replaced by a substitute surnamed Lee, who the ship's operator Chonghaejin Marine claimed is a veteran with eight years of experience on the Incheon-Jeju Island route.

Relatives of passengers threw waterbottles at Prime Minister Chung Hong-won when he visited them at a gymnasium on Jindo Island on Thursday morning.

Rescued passengers said they were repeatedly warned not to move as it would be dangerous when the ship started tilting. They believed more people would have survived if they had been told to evacuate earlier.

The passengers on board the sunken vessel included 325 high school students and 15 teachers who had been on the way for a four-day school trip. The ship departed South Korea's western port city of Incheon Tuesday night for the southern resort island of Jeju.

The death toll was expected to roar as hundreds of passengers were still missing a day after the 6,825-ton passenger ship capsized and sank off Jindo Island, near the southwest corner of the Korean Peninsula, at around 11:30 a.m. local time Wednesday.

The ship sent out a distress signal at about 8:52 a.m. Wednesday and had remained afloat in the waters for some two and a half hours with its body being tilted.

The U.S. Seventh Fleet sent its amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard, which has helicopters on board and was on a routine patrol off South Korea's west coast, to the scene at the request of the South Korean military.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi offered his condolences to the victims of the sunken ferry in a statement sent to the South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se on Wednesday night, said an official of the South Korean Embassy in Beijing.  

This is the second accident involving a Chonghaejin Marine vessel in three weeks. Another Chonghaejin ferry hit a 7.93-ton fishing boat on March 28 en route from Incheon to Baengnyeong Island in the West Sea. The 396-ton ship was carrying about 140 passengers and no injuries were reported.

(Xinhua contributed to the story)

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