Officials say the black boxes of a Boeing jetliner that crashed in South Korea last month stopped recording about four minutes before the accident.

The flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Jeju Air jet that crashed on Dec. 29 stopped recording four minutes before the airliner hit a concrete structure at South Korea's Muan airport, the transport ministry said on Saturday.

The two flight recorders on board a South Korean airliner stopped working before the jet crashed during an emergency landing and subsequent crash that killed 179 of the 181 people on board, officials said Saturday.