On Dec. 22, 2025, Monday, South Korea’s parliament passed a bill to launch an independent investigation into the Jeju Air plane crash in December 2024 that killed 179 people.
The vote in South Korea’s parliament for approving the investigation was passed 245 votes to one on Monday, after planned hearings were cancelled earlier this month. Authorities are also facing anger from the victim’s relatives.
What was the Jeju Airplane crash?
The Jeju Air plane crash was the deadliest air disaster in South Korea’s soil and the worst involving a South Korean airline since a 1997 Korean Air Lines crash in Guam that killed more than 200.
A Jeju Air Boeing 737-800 that departed from Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport had attempted to make a belly landing at Muan International Airport after its landing gear didn’t deploy while making an initial aborted landing. The aircraft veered off the runway and crashed into a concrete ball and exploded into flames, killing 179 people on board on Dec. 29, 2024.
Jeju Air was founded in 2005, and it only ranks behind Korean Air Lines and Asiana Airlines in terms of the number of passengers in South Korea.
Earlier, the Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board, led by the government, had investigated the accident, with the final report being awaited. It said in an interim report in January that the aircraft’s two engines suffered bird strikes. In an update on July 27, 2025, the board announced that they had found that the left engine of the aircraft had been shut down despite being less damaged than the right engine, and it could have kept the aircraft flying.
The board shared that the concrete wall at the end of the runway, which housed airport navigation equipment, did not meet international standards that call for such a structure to be designed to break away easily on impact.
With this new bill, 18 members of parliament will be in a panel that will investigate the possible causes of the crash, including whether enough was done against the risk of bird strike, any engine or mechanical failures and an embankment that the plane was stuck at the end of the runway for 40 days, with the possibility of extension if required. According to the bill, the inquiry will also examine whether government agencies attempted to conceal or play down findings from the Aviation and Railway Accident Board investigation.
The Families are angry
According to media reports, the dead passengers’ families are furious at the Aviation and Railway Investigation Board, as the board reports directly to South Korea’s transport ministry, which is the same government department responsible for airport safety and the concrete structure that many believe worsened the disaster.
Reports also stated that the families said that this creates a structural issue where the investigation is looking into the investigation itself. This potentially violates international aviation standards for independence.
This criticism helped drive parliament’s decision to launch an independent probe. The first anniversary of the crash is on Dec. 29, 2025.
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