Families of five missing victims of the 2014 ferry sinking held a joint funeral service on Saturday after their bodies could not be recovered despite months-long search.

   The memorial service for the missing victims including two high school students and a teacher was held at a port in Mokpo, some 410 kilometer south of Seoul, where the hull of the suken Sewol ferry sits after being retrieved from the sea earlier this year.

   The 6,800-ton Sewol ferry that sank on April 16, 2014, in waters off the country's southwest coast claimed the lives of 304 people, most of them teenage students on a school trip.

   A team of rescue workers had sought to find nine missing victims since early April when the hull was raised from the bottom of the sea and put into a dry dock at the port. But only the bodies of four victims were found.

   A funeral car carrying items left by the victims went around the hull, according to participants.

   The service was attended by a group of families of the ferry incident, Oceans Minister Kim Young-choon and others. (Yonhap)