SEOUL -- The black box of a passenger jet that crashed in South Korea's southwestern airport late last month failed to work for the last four minutes, the transport ministry said Saturday.

The result of analyzing the ill-fated airplane's flight data recorder (FDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) by the US National Transportation Safety Board showed that data storage in both the FDR and the CVR stopped about four minutes before its crash into a localizer, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

The ministry's aviation railway accident investigation committee planned to identify the cause of the data not being stored.

The localizer refers to a part of the instrument landing system providing aircraft with runway centerline guidance.

On Dec 29 last year, a Jeju Air passenger jet carrying 181 people from Bangkok landed without heels, skidded off the runway and hit a concrete mound equipped with the localizer at the end of the runway at Muan International Airport, some 290 km southwest of the capital Seoul.

The accident killed 179 people aboard the aircraft. Two crew were rescued.

Six minutes before the crash, an air traffic controller at the airport warned the plane of a bird strike.

Four minutes before the accident, the plane's captain shouted a Mayday and announced the return to the airport.

The ministry said an investigation into the accident can be conducted through analysis of various data, except the FDR and the CVR, vowing to make best efforts to get to the bottom of the incident.