One more body was recovered from the sunken ferry Sewol on Monday, raising the death toll to 287 and lowering the number of those missing to 17, more than a month after the ship sank off South Korea's southwest coast.

A joint team of government and civilian divers retrieved the body of a woman wearing a blue long-sleeved hooded shirt and khaki sweatpants from a kitchen on the third deck, officials said.

Search operations were halted earlier in the day after a wire connecting an anchor chain to a barge mobilized in the recovery efforts was found to be damaged.

The search resumed late in the afternoon after the wire was repaired.

The 6,825-ton ferry Sewol sank off the southwestern island of Jindo on April 16, carrying an estimated 476 people on board. Most of those dead or missing were students from a high school near Seoul on a school field trip to the southern resort island of Jeju.

The ferry, which departed from Incheon, west of Seoul, sank about two hours away from the resort island.

A period of weaker currents has raised hopes for progress in the search for the missing, but concerns have also grown that parts of the hull may collapse, officials said. (Yonhap)