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A woman going by the name Hong Ga Hye told MBN news that she was with the volunteer divers aiding in the rescue. She then went on to say that although the volunteer divers were ready to do their best to help, they were actually told by the maritime police to just kill time and were even blocked from trying to help.�

She also said that unlike how it's being reported, there is no equipment or personnel being recruited for the rescue effort and that some of the wild rumors circulating on the internet are in fact true. She claimed that the volunteers could hear people talking within the ship and that they even conversed with those inside the ship. However she says the maritime police are preventing the divers from carrying out rescue efforts and refuse to tell them anything.

As this interview started to spread, various netizens started to point out that they recognized this Hong Ga Hye. Those who had kept a close eye on the T-ara and Hwayoung controversy quickly pointed out that this was the same woman who had pretended to be Hwayoung's cousin to lie about things pertaining to T-ara. Netizens who are also big baseball fans or sports fans also recognized her as she was infamous for starting rumors about several athletes and insisted that she dated some of them.

In addition, journalist Kim Yong Ho took to twitter to warn people that Hong Ga Hye is a person he has personally kept track of through these various lies in the past and that she is someone who should not be trusted. His tweets read, "Ah~ MBN has been tricked by Hong Ga Hye!... I assessed her true identity with the detective who personally investigated her. She is beyond the scope of what you've heard of her on the internet. She's not just a simple mythomaniac. She is a woman who is spine-chillingly scary."

Netizens also uncovered her post on Kakao Story, which showed her plane ticket from Jeju Island to Busan, and determined that when calculating her plane time and the time it'd take for her to reach Jindo from Busan, that she would have arrived at the scene after the time she claimed to have been there in her interview.

The maritime police also released an official statement to refute Hong Ga Hye's claims, stating, "MBN's report that implied that the maritime police blocked volunteer divers' efforts are not true... Starting from the day before and currently, the volunteer divers have been brought in three times. There was no report [from them] that there were survivors [talking] in the ship. Even today, 70 volunteer divers used two boats to get to the location of the incident, and we are doing our best to find the missing."

Lately, the parents and relatives on scene have been expressing their dissatisfaction more and more on the rescue effort going on, and Hong Ga Hye's testimony seems to back up their point of view. This was why her interview had been widely believed at first, but as Hong Ga Hye's past has now come to light, it has left many questioning her statements.

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[Update] - After looking into Hong Ga Hye's identity and confirming that maritime police did not block the efforts of volunteer divers, MBN has just released an official apology over the air through their afternoon news report. Admitting their mistake, the chief of the station personally stated, "We bow our heads in apology for creating confusion among the family who are awaiting anxiously, and the maritime police and volunteer rescue workers who are still working to save lives."

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]