Dozens of people were killed on Sunday when a passenger jet crash-landed at an airport in southwestern South Korea, with the aircraft careening down the runway on its belly before bursting into flames.

When South Korea's acting President Choi Sang-mok arrived at the scene of the deadliest air disaster on the country's soil on Sunday, he had been on the job for less than 48 hours.

An aircraft carrying 181 people has crashed at an airport in South Korea, killing at least 28 people, the Yonhap news agency reports. The aircraft drove off a runway and crashed into a wall at Muan International Airport in the south west of the country, the South Korean news agency reports.