Huddled in makeshift shipping container homes on a South Korean waterfront, the relatives of the missing from the Sewol ferry disaster have endured a harrowing wait to recover their dead children.

Nearly three years ago Lee Keum-Hui's daughter Eun-Hwa went on a school trip and never returned.

Lee rushed to Jindo, a five-hour drive from the family home in Ansan, on the day the Sewol sank, hoping to bring her frightened daughter home. She has lived at Paengmok harbour, the closest port to accident, ever since, unable to begin mourning.

"I had brought a change of clothes for my daughter... But I have been waiting for more than 1,070 days now," said Lee, recalling the night she first stared blankly out at the dark sea that had taken her 16-year-old.

Eun-Hwa is one of the nine victims whose bodies could still be trapped inside the Sewol, the 6,825-tonne ferry that emerged from the murky depths on Thursday.

The vessel was carrying 476 people when it went down off the southwestern island of Jindo, leaving 304 people dead. Almost all of them schoolchildren, in one of the country's worst maritime disasters.

"Time has stopped at April 16, 2014," Lee said.

(Source: AFP)