Almost 600 survivors were plucked from rough seas after a Philippines ship packed with passengers returning home for Christmas sank shortly before dawn yesterday.
Officials said 591 people had been rescued, nine were dead and 58 were still missing at 9 p.m. local time (1 p.m. GMT), about 16 hours after the accident in the Visayan Sea in the central Philippines.
The Philippines, an archipelagic nation where sea transport is widely used, has a poor maritime record. In 1987, some 4,300 people were killed when a ferry collided with an oil tanker near Manila in the world's worst peacetime sea disaster.
That accident also took place in the week before Christmas, when people in the Catholic nation jam airports, bus stations and ports looking to get home for the celebrations.
The Defence Secretary, Mr Orlando Mercado, said: "December is the season wherein some people are a little lax about their travel plans and the vessels about their maintenance . . . They might have been taking too many chances during the Christmas season . . .
"The problem usually is old, creaky and unseaworthy ships compounded by overloading and a lack of compliance with safety measures, which are poor to start with."
The MV Asia South Korea, carrying 606 passengers and 52 crew from the central city of Cebu to Iloilo, left on Wednesday night on what should have been a 12-hour voyage.
It sank off Bantayan Island, 500km south-east of Manila, at 5 a.m. (9 p.m. GMT Wednesday) after being buffeted by high waves, Mr Mercado said.
A massive rescue operation was immediately launched. Naval ships, other merchant vessels, helicopters and fishing boats converged on the area.
"They can still hear people calling . . . they won't leave until they pick everyone up," said Mr Andriano Afuego, a civil defence official in Cebu in the course of the rescue.
Television footage showed people bobbing in the sea with bright orange life-vests strapped around their chests as motorboats moved in.
Many women and children were rescued from lifeboats, while those in life-jackets and in the sea were mostly men.
Many survivors had fractured limbs and were taken to hospital, but none had life-threatening injuries.
Officials said the sea was rough at the accident site, some 10 nautical miles from Bantayan Island, and that rescue operations would continue into the night.
Trans-Asia Shipping, the ship's owner, said the vessel underwent extensive seaworthiness checks in September.
The coast guard commander, Mr Franklin Llanto, said departure clearance at Cebu was delayed "because when we conducted pre-departure inspection, we found out that there were excess passengers".
He said the ship had a licensed capacity for 614 passengers and the excess passengers were offloaded.
Despite frequent sea disasters, ferries remain the most popular means of long-haul transport in the largely impoverished archipelago of more than 7,000 islands, because fares are cheaper than air travel.