South Korean Premier Chung Hong-won has resigned over what he admitted as the government's mishandling of a ferry disaster that left almost 200 passengers dead and more than a hundred others missing.

Hong-won's announcement of his resignation Sunday was brief and somber.  It has yet to be approved by the President.

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Hong-won said that keeping his post would be a burden for an administration that has to deal with what he described as "many irregularities and malpractices" that have plagued South Korean society for so long.

He expressed hope that his resignation would pave the way for rectification of social ills so that accidents like the ferry tragedy will not happen again.

The Sewol ferry was loaded with more than 400 passengers, most of them teachers and students on their way to Jeju island for a field trip, when it sank in the morning of April 16.

The ferry's captain and crew bungled evacuation procedures by ordering the passengers to stay put, and so they ended up sinking with the ferry to their death.

Wrong information passed on by government in the initial hours made it appear that majority of the passengers were rescued early on, leading people to believe that it was a successful action-packed drama at sea rather than the tragedy that it turned out to be.

The number of retrieved bodies had climbed to 187 by Sunday as divers continued to search the sunken ship for hundreds more who are missing.

The Prime Minister was booed and pelted with bottled water the last time he went out to visit grieving relatives of the ferry's passengers.