Thousands of South Koreans are participating in memorial events for the more than 300 people who died in a ferry disaster two years ago that deeply rattled the country.
Police say about 2500 people gathered for an event on Saturday marking the second anniversary of the sinking at a memorial altar in Ansan, where most of the victims lived.
Nearly 5000 others are expected in the evening at a square in the capital Seoul, where relatives of the victims had camped for months in protest.
A total of 304 people, most of them students from a single high school in Ansan, died when the ferry Sewol sank off South Korea's southwest coast in April 2014 in a disaster partially blamed on official incompetence and corruption.
Divers recovered 295 bodies from the ship's wreckage and nearby seas before the government stopped underwater searches after seven months. Nine victims remain missing.
The captain is serving a life sentence over the sinking.
