Off Newport Coast, Two Tales of Survival : Plane crash: Pilot remains missing, but two others are rescued.

For six hours, Chul Hong Kim kept moving in the open ocean seven miles off Catalina Island, a former competitive swimmer calling on all his strength to stay afloat as the U.S. Coast Guard frantically searched for him in the darkness.

Separated from two colleagues who had gone down with him in a small aircraft 13 miles west of Newport Beach, Kim, 34, did not know if he was the only one alive--until the miraculous moment Monday morning when rescuers on the cutter Tybee heard his screams and plucked him from the ocean six hours after the crash.

Kim and Kwan Hue Lee, 32, both survived the accident relatively unharmed, through a combination of good fortune and conditioning that stunned doctors and their rescuers.

“[The hospital staffers] were all saying that we might want to go out and practice our swimming,” said Dr. Diane Birnbaumer, the emergency room physician at Harbor/UCLA Medical Center in Carson who treated the men. “That’s what saved their lives, there’s no question in my mind.”

But by Monday afternoon, rescuers had called off a search for the plane’s missing pilot, who was credited with skillfully setting the aircraft down in the surf when his lone engine failed. The sister of former Korean Air Force pilot Sang Ho Han, 34, asked all seagoing vessels to search for her brother.

Rescuers aboard the Tybee, who used searchlights and flares in the darkness, found Lee at 10:30 p.m. Sunday, swimming the backstroke in two- and three-foot ocean swells with his eyeglasses still on, rhythmically chanting “rescue, rescue, rescue,” said the cutter’s commander, Lt. Dwight D. Mathers.

They pulled him from the water dazed and bloated with early signs of hypothermia, more than three hours after Han reported trouble with the engine of his Mooney Mark 20 plane and disappeared from Federal Aviation Administration radar.

Rescuers found Kim, who told them he swam competitively in high school, in good condition at 1:20 a.m. Monday. He broke down and cried when he learned one of his friends had been saved and immediately volunteered to help search for the pilot, Mathers said.

Both men were airlifted to the hospital with body temperatures near normal and healthy vital signs. Neither had a flotation device when the Tybee pulled alongside them, but Lee told doctors he had clutched an inflated bag or plastic container for a time.

The Tybee, a 110-foot cutter based in San Diego, arrived at the crash area at 10 p.m. Thirty minutes later, the crew heard Lee’s rhythmic screams and cut the engines.

“It was hard to hear anything,” Seaman Edward Corrington said. “I wasn’t sure if it was just in my head. Then I realized I did hear him.” Nearly the entire 15-person crew ran to the deck and began shouting into the night, shooting off flares in search of the source of the voice. A lookout was stationed at the cutter’s bow to prevent the vessel from running over Lee.

Lee was so dazed he did not realize he had been rescued until Seaman Brian Putnam swam to him in a wet suit with a torpedo-shaped flotation device.

On Monday night, Kim said he didn’t “know how I survived. After three hours, I almost gave up, but I didn’t want to die. I was scared, so I just kept myself afloat.”

Putnam said this was the fourth plane crash he’s worked and the first time he’s ever come across anything. “All the other times, there were no people, no wreckage,” said Putnam, who said he was “very happy” to pull two people from the water.

Added Mathers: “Finding a person in the water is the most difficult kind of search, because they are so low to the water.”

The Tybee, two 41-foot U.S. Coast Guard rescue boats and a Coast Guard helicopter suspended the search for Han at 3:40 p.m. Monday as his sister made a plea to all seagoing vessels to keep looking for him.

Han, a Seoul, South Korea, businessman who works on virtual reality projects and often stays with his sister in Diamond Bar, purchased the 1964 aircraft from a broker at Brackett Field in La Verne within the past few weeks, according to Don Llorente, senior safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. Han planned to outfit the aircraft with long-range fuel tanks and fly it to Korea in the near future.

His sister, Janice Lim, 38, said the outing was a demonstration of sorts for his passengers, a Korean journalist and a hotel businessman who were interested in his plans for the airplane. Lim met the Tybee as it docked in San Pedro on Monday for a tearful exchange about the unsuccessful search for her brother and the near-miraculous rescue of his two friends.

“I just have really high hopes that he is out there,” said Lim, who described her brother as athletic and a former scuba diver. “Please tell people to look for him. Maybe they will see him. Maybe they can locate him and bring him back.”

The crash baffled investigators.

“We are mystified,” Llorente said. “He did report that the engine did quit. That is obvious. But we have no knowledge as to why it quit.”

Kim said he didn’t know what happened during the flight. All of a sudden, the engine started to sputter and before he knew it, the plane was descending, he said.

The aircraft, described by an FAA spokesman as a “Cadillac” of small aircraft, has not yet been recovered from the ocean off Catalina Island. Investigators were collecting data on when Han had last refueled and preparing to review the plane’s service record, he said.

Han has a private pilot’s license and is certified to fly single-engine and multi-engine aircraft, said an FAA spokeswoman in Oklahoma City. Han also obtained a license in July that allows him to fly at night using instruments.

Birnbaumer, the emergency room physician, said Lee and Kim escaped harm with a combination of good luck, quick wits and their excellent physical conditioning.

“These guys were with the program, that’s clear,” the doctor said. The patients spoke only halting English to the emergency room staff as they were kept warm through the night, but their accounts astounded doctors and nurses.

At 66 degrees, the water temperature was “warmer than usual, but that still means their metabolism was fighting with a 30 degree temperature difference,” Birnbaumer said. “It’s miraculous.”

Han, Lee and Kim flew to Catalina Island from Brackett Field in La Verne on Sunday, arriving at Avalon about 5:30 p.m. and leaving to return to La Verne between 6:45 p.m. and 6:50 p.m., Llorente said.

Han first contacted Federal Aviation Administration radar operators in San Diego at 6:58 p.m., when the plane was flying at about 4,500 feet, said FAA spokesman Hank Verbais. One minute later, he declared an engine emergency, saying his aircraft was losing power. He disappeared from radar at 7:07 p.m., at 400 feet, officials said. Weather conditions were clear, with only light winds.

Kim and Lee told doctors the pilot managed to bring the craft in flat to the water, preventing the sharp plunge that could have caused the plane to break up on impact or sink right away.

Coast Guard officials attributed the survival of Kim and Lee to Han’s expertise.

“This is obviously a skilled pilot,” said Lt.(j.g.) Tim Cotchay. “He put the plane down well enough for all three men to exit safely. He did that at night. He did that in two- to three-foot swells.”

The trio kept close together in the water, with Kim at one point helping Lee stay afloat. But as the minutes turned into hours, they were separated by the surf.

Instead of treading water, Kim and Lee kept swimming, a tactic that was exhausting but also lifesaving, Birnbaumer said. The exertion kept their body heat and circulation at elevated levels, staving off the effects of the chilly water.

Lee was admitted to the hospital Monday after X-rays showed he had inhaled seawater. But Birnbaumer said he would likely require only another night of observation and treatment with an oxygen device.

Kim was released from the hospital Monday afternoon. Hospital staff and officials with the Korean Consulate in Los Angeles arranged for lodging and assistance. He said he expects to return home soon.

Times staff writer Don Lee contributed to this report.