The trial the 15 crew members of the South Korean Sewol ferry has started on Tuesday and the relatives of the tragedy's victims have called for the execution of the defendants.

While divers are still looking for bodies in the sunken ferry, emotions have run sky-high more than a month after the tragedy occurred. People are concerned that the trial in Gwangju city will lack fairness, Arab News reported.

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The Sewol ferry was transporting 476 passengers, 325 of which were high school students, when the vessel capsized and went down on April 16. As of now, there are 292 confirmed deaths, while 12 are still missing.

Captain Lee Joon-Seok and three of the ferry's senior crew members are facing the charge "homicide through willful negligence," which entails death penalty. The other eleven members are accused of criminal negligence, which carries lesser penalty.

The handcuffed and bound defendants entered the courthouse before the trial started. Some relatives inside the courtroom shouted "murderers" while those outside expressed their anger using their placards, one of which requested the judges to allow the families to "execute them."

Most of the charges stem from the fact that the captain and the other crew members chose to leave the ferry while hundreds of passengers were still struggling to get out of the vessel before it sank. A few members who stayed behind and helped get the passengers to safety have died.

The coastguard released a clip showing Lee hurrying to safety and this had further enraged the victims' families. The tragedy shook South Korea and exposed the incompetence and corruption that had built up to lead to the tragedy.

During the presentation of charges, the prosecution explained that the defendants had enough time to evacuate the passengers properly but they instead chose to jump ship knowing that those left behind would die.

According to Seoul-based senior attorney Jason Ha, this would be a "very difficult case" and that the defendants would be the main target of public rage, especially since the owner of the ferry has already absconded and is still being hunted by the police.