It is good to see ferry service between Japan and South Korea is back to normal:
Ferry services between South Korea’s Busan and Japan’s Tsushima Island resumed Saturday after a three-year suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Busan Port Authority said two ferry vessels departed from a port in the southeastern city at 8:30 a.m. and 10:10 a.m., and arrived at Hitakatsu Port on the southwestern Japanese island 1 1/2 hours later.
Tsushima is the closest Japanese island to the Korean Peninsula.
With the resumption, Busan has now reopened all four sea routes with Japan that were halted in April 2020 due to the coronavirus.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
I am not sure what authorities the Defense Security Command had, but if they were conducting illegal surveillance than people should be held accountable:
A special military probe team has indicted four senior uniformed officers, including two general-grade ones, for their alleged role in the illicit surveillance of family members of victims in a 2014 ferry disaster, investigators said Tuesday.
The team wrapped up its monthslong inquiry into the allegations that officials of the now-defunct Defense Security Command (DSC) monitored the victims’ families to minimize the political impact of the tragic incident that laid bare the government’s ineptitude in crisis management.
Investigators indicted and detained a major general, a brigadier general and a colonel for issuing directives for the purported surveillance. Another colonel was also indicted without detention on the same charges.
The ferry Sewol sank in waters off the country’s southwestern island of Jindo on April 16, 2014, leaving more than 300 passengers dead or missing. The bereaved families’ criticism of the government’s response to the disaster worsened public sentiment against the then-Park Geun-hye administration. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the Moon administration has already “reformed” the Defense Security Command:
https://www.rokdrop.net/2018/08/south-korean-committee-claims-they-want-to-reform-defense-security-command/
Choo Mi-ae (C), leader of the ruling Democratic Party, attends a rally in Gwanghwamun Square in downtown Seoul, on April 14, 2018, to mark the fourth anniversary of the sinking of the ferry Sewol which sunk in waters off south coast on April 16, 2014, leaving hundreds of people killed and missing. (Yonhap)
A semisubmersible ship carrying the Sewol ferry, lifted from where it sank some three years ago in the country’s southwestern waters, arrives at a port in Mokpo, some 100 kilometers away, on March 31, 2017. The doomed ship will be put into a dry dock, and a search will begin to find the remains of nine people still missing from the sinking on April 16, 2014, who are among the 304 killed in the tragedy. (Yonhap)
The sunken ferry Sewol ferry is loaded on a semisubmersible transport vessel in waters near Jindo, 472 kilometers southwest of Seoul, on March 26, 2017. The passenger ferry sank on April 16, 2014, killing more than 300 people, mostly high school students on a school trip, in the nation’s worst maritime disaster. Nine bodies are still missing. (Yonhap)
I feel horrible for the families that have to live through this tragedy all over again as the resources have finally been mustered to lift the sunken Sewol ferry boat:
Salvage operators will load the Sewol ferry onto a semisubmersible ship late into Friday night ― the final task before heading to land.
“We are racing against time,” said Lee Cheol-jo, an official from the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, who is in charge of the operation. “With strong tidal currents expected in the area Saturday, the workers have to do everything correctly to finish the job hopefully before midnight.”
He said loading the ferry onto a semisubmersible ship is the trickiest stage of the operation, which requires optimal weather conditions.
The workers plan to finish the job before March 24, the last day of the neap tide period around the area. The next neap is not until April 5.
Lee said the rest of the operation will not be as vulnerable to weather conditions.
The semisubmersible ship will take the 6,825-ton ferry to Mokpo Port next week.
The sunken ferry was lifted from the depths, Thursday, nearly three years after it sank and left 304 people dead on April 16, 2014, in Korea’s worst maritime disaster. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link.
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