Prosecutors investigating South Korea’s worst maritime disaster in four decades said the captain of the ‘Sewol’ ferry and two crew members are facing a life sentence for abandoning passengers as the vessel sank.
Homicide through abandonment carries a prison term of three years or more and a life sentence is possible under Korean law.
Captain Lee Joon Seok, (68), who wasn't on the bridge at the time of the incident, the third mate named Park, who was steering the vessel, and a helmsman Cho, who was with Park, face the abandonment charge and others including homicide through occupational negligence, prosecutor Lee Bong Chang said today in Mokpo.
All 15 crew members involved in navigating the Sewol survived the sinking and all have been arrested. Coast guard footage showed the captain boarding a rescue boat dressed in shorts and no shoes, with other crew members also boarding not wearing their uniforms.
YTN TV – a 24-hour news channel in South Korea – identified the crew.
“We couldn’t ask people whether they’re crew or passengers because the situation was too urgent,” Kim Kyung Il, the captain of one of the first coast guard boats to reach the sinking vessel, said in an interview broadcast on YTN. “We didn’t know who was a crew member and who was passenger.”
Growing public anger prompted Prime Minister Chung Hong Won’s resignation yesterday as polls showed support for President Park Geun Hye and the ruling party slipping and as the country’s major newspapers accused the government of mishandling its response to the tragedy.
Most of the 302 dead and missing from the ferry sinking were high school students from the same school, adding to the sense of outrage.
"These kids were killed because we adults didn't do things properly," 72-year-old Kim Sook Ja said as she sat outside a memorial to the victims of Danwon High School, near Seoul, who were on a field trip to Jeju island when the vessel sank. "I'm so put off and angry about this country. I'm just so sorry and so heartbroken."
Investigators have said they are probing whether the ferry turned too quickly or abnormally, and whether it was carrying too much cargo, when it listed and sank in an area known for strong currents off the southwest corner of the Korean peninsula.
Justice Minister Hwang Kyo Ahn today pledged an overhaul of shipping industry regulations. “We will study any structural problems in the shipping industry and overhaul its legal framework to prevent similar disasters,” Hwang said in a parliament committee today. “Given the public anger and the issue’s seriousness, we will actively apply all laws to strictly punish those involved. The ferry’s crew, operator and regulator face severe punishment over any wrongdoings.”
Survivors have said the crew gave at least two orders between 8.30am and 9am for passengers to don life jackets and remain in their existing locations.
Captain Lee has said those orders were given because lifeboats hadn’t yet arrived and the currents were too strong to evacuate.
President Park called the actions of the ferry’s crew in abandoning passengers on board “like murder”.
Prosecutors raided Mokpo Coast Guard today to investigate whether it took immediate action after it received a distress call from a student on the ferry that was transferred via emergency services, Kim Jae In, a senior inspector at Korea Coast Guard’s West Regional Headquarters said in his office.
The emergency service control center was also raided.
The coast guard is still looking at why only one of the 46 lifeboats on the Sewol was properly deployed and why others didn’t auto-inflate when they hit the water, Kim said.
Three officials at the Korea Shipping Association, which oversees ferry operators, were arrested for destroying evidence before a prosecutors' raid, Yonhap News reported.