Seconds after impact, the 1,200-ton South Korean navy ship Cheonan tilted and began to sink. Petty Officer Jeon Jun Young's first thought as he scrambled through darkened corridors to escape was that North Korea had attacked.
"I asked myself, has war broken out?" Jeon said in the city of Daejeon, where he now works as a car dealer. "People were covered in blood and moaning in pain from broken bones. And when I got out onto the side of the ship I realized its rear half was gone."
Five years on from the explosion that killed 46 sailors — almost half the crew — and led to increased border defense by both sides, the sinking is reigniting tensions between South Korea and its reclusive, nuclear-armed neighbor. North Korea denies South Korea's charges it torpedoed the ship and says retaliatory sanctions prevent it granting concessions such as reunions of families separated by the Korean War in the 1950s.