At a joint press conference, Szijjártó said there were “large-scale technical preparations underway” to recover the wreck of the boat as soon as possible.

High waters and bad visibility underwater make the work difficult and dangerous, he said.

Divers already tried and failed on Thursday to get close to where it lays six meters deep, he said, adding that the search operation was expected to take a long time.

The river is being searched all the way to the southern border, and the Serbian authorities are also cooperating, he said.

An Austrian team of divers is already onsite, and a South Korean specialist unit was expected to arrive on Friday.

He noted that an investigation had been opened to uncover the circumstances of the accident. Szijjártó again expressed his condolences to the people of South Korea, the families of the victims and wished the survivors a speedy recovery.

Kang thanked the Hungarian government and authorities for their work and said that the main focus was to find those still missing. The area of search has therefore been expanded, she said.

The South Korean authorities are assisting with identifying the bodies already recovered, she said, noting that she had visited the site of the accident earlier in the day and that she was assured that everything possible was being done to find those missing and to recover the sunken boat.

She also expressed her sympathies to the relatives of the South Korean and Hungarian victims.

MTI Photo: Kovács Attila