It is hard to believe that it has already been 10 years since the Sewol ferry sinking. It just doesn’t seem like it has been that long probably because the tragedy has remained in the headlines for so long:
A commemoration ceremony is in progress at Incheon Family Park in Incheon, west of Seoul, on April 16, 2024, marking the 10th anniversary of the deadly sinking of the ferry Sewol. (Yonhap)
Bereaved families and government officials commemorated the victims of the deadly sinking of the ferry Sewol on Tuesday, marking the 10th anniversary of one of the country’s worst maritime disasters.
Interior Minister Lee Sang-min and Incheon Mayor Yoo Jeong-bok were among the about 200 people who attended the commemoration ceremony in Incheon Family Park in Incheon, west of Seoul, where the ashes of 44 victims killed in the maritime accident are enshrined.
Including them, a total of 304 people, mostly high school students on a school field trip, were killed as the 6,800-ton ship sank off the southwestern coast on April 16, 2014.
To this day, the way Park Geun-hye admin reacted to the Sewol Ferry Disaster is just incomprehensible to me. It was so fundamentally contrary to good politics and common decency. It would have been EASY to do the right thing. Instead, they chose evil to the point of self-harm. https://t.co/ZYUj3chffC
Remembering victims of Sewol ferry sinking Yellow ribbons tied by mourners for victims of the 2014 deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry wave in the wind on April 16, 2023, at a port in Mokpo, 410 kilometers south of Seoul, where the wreck of the retrieved ship was put in place, as the country held the ninth memorial service for the victims. (Yonhap)
9th memorial service for victims of Sewol ferry sinking This photo, taken April 16, 2023, shows the ninth memorial service held in Incheon, west of Seoul, to mark the death of victims of the 2014 deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry. (Yonhap)
Anniversary of ferry tragedy People participate in a rally in Seoul on April 8, 2023, to mark the ninth anniversary of the sinking of the Sewol ferry on April 16, 2014, that claimed more than 300 lives, mostly teenagers on a school excursion. (Yonhap)
It is amazing that it has been over eight years since the Sewol ferry disaster and legal actions are still happening:
Lee Byung-kee, former chief of staff of the Park Geun-hye administration, talks to the press after his trial at the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho District, southern Seoul, on Wednesday. [YONHAP]
Nine officials that worked under President Park Geun-hye were acquitted on charges of obstructing the investigation into the tragic sinking of the Sewol ferry that killed more than 300 people in 2014, many of them students on a school trip.
The officials, which included Lee Byung-kee, chief of staff of President Park, were accused of obstructing a special committee that was formed in 2015 to investigate the Sewol ferry tragedy, including the 7 hours President Park was reportedly missing.
All nine former officials were indicted without detention in May 2020 on charges of obstructing the appointment of a key official on the committee, the dispatch of 17 public officials and ending the investigation period of the committee prematurely.
The Seoul Central District Court said while it acknowledge some of the acts were committed, it noted that the investigation did not go into detail to prove who or how those acts violated the law.
The court acquitted them on the charges for lack of evidence in proving any malfeasance.
You can read more at the link, but basically what these officials were being accused of was trying to cover up former President Park’s actions the day of the Sewol tragedy, the so called missing seven hours. Media speculation said she was having botox treatments or even an affair during the missing seven hours. None of this was true when an investigation by the Moon administration showed she was meeting with the infamous Choi Soon-shil and getting her hair done and the report of the accident was left on a note outside her door.
Even if she was notified immediately it would not have made a difference on what happened that day. If a rescue was going to happen it was going to have to be by first responders from the ROK Coast Guard. The Coast Guard office in Mokpo immediately sent a vessel to the accident site after receiving emergency phone calls from passengers. The vessel arrived at the scene before the sinking, but did not order the passengers to evacuate. This contributed to the various reasons why so many people died when the Sewol sunk.
Regardless the official timeline is not flattering towards President Park and apparently her staff tried to shield her from scrutiny and thus the legal actions that were taken against them by the follow on Moon administration.
It seems to me it would be a difficult precedent to start by holding first responders criminally responsible every time an emergency operation does not go well. Who would want to take the risk of being a first responder then? It appears that the Seoul court agrees with that assessment:
The salvaged Sewol ferry sits at a port in Mokpo, South Jeolla Province, southwestern South Korea, on April 16, 2020, the sixth anniversary of the sinking of the 6,800-ton Sewol passenger ferry. (Yonhap)
A Seoul court on Monday acquitted a former maritime police chief of mishandling the rescue operation during the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014 that killed more than 300 people.
The Seoul Central District Court found Kim Suk-kyoon, then-chief of the Korea Coast Guard, not guilty of professional negligence in one of the country’s worst peacetime disasters.
Nine others, who were in key posts of the organization at that time, were also acquitted of the same charge.
Sewol families protest probe result Bereaved family members and activists stage a rally near the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Jan. 23, 2021, in protest of the recently announced result of a prosecutorial probe into the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry, which dismissed most of the key allegations raised by them and their supporters. (Yonhap)
Sewol ferryThis photo taken April 13, 2019, in Mokpo, 410 kilometers south of Seoul, shows the Sewol ferry, which sank off the country’s southwestern coast in April 2014, claiming more than 300 lives. The ferry was put onto land at a port in Mokpo in 2017. (Yonhap)
Memorial tents for Sewol victims removedTents set up in downtown Seoul by families of the victims of the Sewol ferry sinking are dismantled on March 18, 2019, as their removal begins. The tents were set up as a memorial for the victims and to demand a full investigation into the Sewol disaster, which killed 304 people on April 16, 2014. Most of the victims were high school students on an excursion. The families agreed to withdraw the tents they installed in July in the year of the tragedy. (Yonhap)
![Lee Byung-kee, former chief of staff of the Park Geun-hye administration, talks to the press after his trial at the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho District, southern Seoul, on Wednesday. [YONHAP]](https://i0.wp.com/koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2023/02/01/ee542fb1-ef32-46fe-afdd-175ab15c02aa.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
