Seoul: Heart-wrenching messages of fear, love and despair, sent by high school students from a sinking South Korean ferry added extra emotional weight today to a tragedy that has stunned the entire nation.

Nearly 300 people -- most of them students on a high school trip to a holiday island -- are still missing after the ferry capsized and sank on last morning. "Sending this in case I may not be able to say this again. Mom, I love you," one student Shin Young-Jin said in a text to his mother that was widely circulated in the South Korean media. "Oh, I love you too son," texted back his mother who was unaware at the time that her son was caught in a life and death struggle to escape the rapidly sinking vessel.