Tag: Sewol

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/

I have written much about the arrest of Korean journalist Byun Hee-jae because his articles have been largely the only reporting challenging the established narrative of why former President Park Geun-hye was impeached.  So what is the established narrative of why President Park was impeached?

I think this December 2016 article by Suki Kim in Foreign Policy best sums up the established narrative that many in the public and the media believe.  ROK Heads may remember that Suki Kim is the journalist that taught English at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology for six months recording notes for what would become her 2014 book, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite.  I have no issues with Ms. Kim, but I am just using her article as example of how members of the media largely parroted the established narrative at the time that brought down former President Park Geun-hye.

Here is the opening paragraph in her Foreign Policy article about the impeachment of President Park and the rise of independent journalists in South Korea:

In late fall, I left New York City for Seoul, intending to visit for just a few days. Then, on Oct. 24, a small South Korean cable network called JTBC revealed that its reporters had discovered a tablet that had belonged to Choi Soon-sil, the hidden power behind President Park Geun-hye. The data on the device exposed a web of unprecedented corruption. In response, millions of people took to the streets, waving candles in protest, until Dec. 9, when South Korea’s parliament voted to impeach Park. [Foreign Policy]

From the start of Ms. Kim’s article you can see the importance of the tablet PC that JTBC discovered.  Would the tablet PC have been as important if people knew that JTBC had changed their story three times on how the tablet was discovered?  Would the importance of the tablet had been the same if people knew that the tablet PC could not be conclusively proven to be Choi’s. Another interesting fact is that the tablet PC did not contain Korean document editing-capable software.  So how was Choi supposedly editing sensitive documents for President Park on a tablet that did not have the software to do this?  The report with these findings was not released until a year after President Park’s impeachment and the public interest in the tablet had died down.

The big thing people should think about is in their own personal lives, how many people they know that leave their phone or tablet PC without password protection?  If you believe JTBC, this is essentially what Choi Soon-shil did, she left a tablet PC filled with sensitive documents in old office space with no password protection that allowed JTBC to find and read the documents.  This alone made me skeptical much less the other facts that have since emerged about the tablet PC.

Ms. Kim continues in her article by making an odd attack against President Trump that he received favorable coverage from the media before the US election:

Having just come from the United States, where a credulous media had been manipulated by the winning presidential candidate rather than holding him to account, I was particularly sensitive to the resilient and creative role played by South Korean reporters.

I would agree that during the Republican primaries that Donald Trump received oversized media coverage compared to other candidates.  This is because he drove ratings for the networks due to his celebrity not because they supported him in anyway.  Once he was the Republican nominee it was like a switch was flipped and the mainstream media changed to relentless negative attacks that did not stop during the lead up to the election and continues to this day.

Ms. Kim’s article continues about conservative bias in the mainstream Korean media under President Park:

The vast influence of South Korea’s independent media is a belated product of dismal failures by the country’s establishment media. For instance, there have long been three main television stations in South Korea: MBC, KBS, and SBS. But after the 2007 election to the presidency of the conservative Lee Myung-bak, the heads of the news stations were replaced by people with an explicitly pro-government stance, essentially turning the press into a propaganda machine. In 2010, thousands of journalists went on strike in response, many of whom were members of the “386 Generation,” a term for those born in the 1960s who went to college during the 1980s dictatorship and student riots. Some of the strikers eventually resigned while others were transferred to lesser divisions where they would not be able to report. It was also around this time that the government took a hand in setting up brand-new cable stations, called jongpyun, linked to the existing establishment newspapers, which were mostly in favor of the ruling Saenuri Party.

The conservative bias in the media during the Park administration is true, but there was left wing bias in the mainstream media during the prior liberal governments.  The left wing media even tried to overturn the election of former President Lee Myung-bak with the anti-US beef protests in 2008.  The Korean media aired false claims about US beef that caused violent anti-government protests.

Lee came to power after a decade of left wing rule in South Korea that saw him begin to undue many of the initiative of the prior governments.  In response the bias media and left wing groups attempted to get President Lee to resign a few months after being elected with the false US beef claims.  It can be argued that what the Korean left accomplished in getting rid of President Park is what they first attempted against President Lee in 2008.

After the anti-US beef protests President Lee decided to drive out the left wing board members from the major media outlets and use libel laws against other critics.  The political polarization of the Korean media has only continued under the Moon administration which used union protests and violence to drive out board members from KBS and MBC appointed by conservative politicians so the coverage could return to the left wing bias they had under prior liberal governments.

Ms. Kim continues in her article discussing the Sewol disaster:

During the Sewol disaster, however, energized independent journalists finally managed to break the partisan establishment media’s monopoly on the public’s attention. What on the surface appeared to be just an unfortunate accident struck at the emotional core of South Koreans in the same way the 9/11 attacks did for Americans because it revealed a pervasive rottenness under the surface of the country’s political system. It was later revealed that the sinking and the lack of rescue efforts were linked to federal-level corruption involving the ferry owners, the insurance company, the Korean coast guard, and the Korean navy.

No argument from me in regards to the corruption surrounding the Sewol disaster, however, this is nothing new and not something caused by President Park.  The fact that a business was able to run an unsafe ferry operation due to corruption is unsurprising to me.  This is the country that has had bridges and shopping malls collapse in on themselves from shoddy construction caused by corruption and poor safety enforcement.  The Park administration was just a continuation of the status quo.

Here is where Ms. Kim continues on with another well known narrative about President Park’s missing seven hours during the Sewol Ferry Boat disaster:

South Korea is one of the most digitally connected nations in the world. The horror was witnessed live online by the entire nation, and those trapped teenagers were texting and video chatting their parents until their final seconds. In those desperate hours, however, Park was nowhere to be found, and no statement was issued by the Blue House until the president finally appeared in public, seven hours after the accident happened, looking dazed and clueless as she asked, “Why is it so hard to find the students if they are wearing life jackets?” Everyone had drowned hours ago.

Remember Ms. Kim wrote this back in December 2016 when the established narrative had already been established about President Park and the Sewol disaster.  Media speculation said she was having botox treatments or even an affair during the missing seven hours.  An investigation conducted by the Moon administration after taking office disclosed the timeline of events involving President Park.

By the time she found out about the accident that morning there was no chance to impact rescue operations.  If a rescue was going to happen it had to happen by the 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.  An immediate evacuation and rescue by the Coast Guard would have saved many of the passengers.

This was incompetence by the ROK Coast Guard commander on the scene who was clearly unprepared to deal with such an accident and not something Park Geun-hye was going to be able to resolve in the few minutes she had from the Blue House.  If people want to criticize her for lax government regulations that allowed the overweight ferry to operate and the poor disaster response by the Coast Guard I think that is fair.  However, to claim she could have personally did something to save those people that morning, but instead hung out in her bedroom is completely unfair in my opinion.

What Park Geun-hye was guilty of was bad optics.  Instead of making a statement that morning, she waited to receive reports on the situation and met with aides and her infamous friend Choi Soon-shil to determine the way ahead on the disaster.  They decided to have Park visit the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters where she made her statement to the country that afternoon.  This created the perception of the seven hour gap which her critics were happy to make things up to fill.  Even after the investigation the optics still wern’t that good because it showed she received reports and met with aides in her bedroom and presidential residence instead of her office at the Blue House.

Ms. Kim continues about the Sewol tragedy:

When the Sewol ferry sank, Lee was one of the first reporters to arrive at the scene and was the last one to leave, more than a month later. As the mainstream media reported that there was a massive rescue team of hundreds of helicopters and ships, Lee reported that there were just two voluntary divers at the scene. A video clip of Lee, at a meeting of victims’ families, shouting at the other reporters for publishing lies and then breaking down in tears went viral.

In regards to poor coverage of the Sewol disaster it would not be surprising to me in the least if the ROK mainstream media was trying to minimize political damage to the Park administration.  Now the complete opposite is happening with the Moon administration consolidating control of the major media outlets to give them favorable coverage instead.

The addictive real-time reporting of the Sewol disaster demonstrated the potential power of independent journalism. Now such journalists are increasingly turning to documentary reporting to engage their audience in an age where films can be made using just a phone. Lee has used this medium expertly. His first film, Diving Bell, about the Sewol tragedy was first released in theaters, then aired on YouTube, and then finally on TV on the eve of the parliament hearing on the Sewol ferry’s sinking. He will soon release a film called The President’s Seven Hours; he was the first to report the claim that during the seven-hour disappearance, Park was under anesthetic in the Blue House, getting a face-lifting, Botox-related injection treatment.

Here is another example of Ms. Kim repeating the established narrative at the time about the botox injections.  The investigation launched by the Moon administration did not find that Park was having botox treatments that morning.  The investigation did find that she was having botox treatments at other times by a doctor not employed by the Blue House.  This doctor was later convicted for lying about the treatments and given a suspended sentence.

As far as independent journalism, that is what Byun Hee-jae has been attempting to do with his reporting about the tablet PC and it got him sent to jail.  Here is the passage where Ms. Kim talks more about JTBC TV:

Among the generally pro-government jongpyun, JTBC TV stands out as the only left-leaning network. The station, which first broke the tablet story and amplified information originated by Joo and Lee, has dominated ratings during the scandal. Since the Sewol tragedy, when it was seen as the only reliable voice among the cable networks, it has also played a critical role in invigorating Korean media.

JTBC may have done better coverage of the initial Sewol tragedy compared to the major media channels, but their later reporting on the tragedy, the tablet PC, as well as the THAAD issue we now know was either sensationalized or not true.

Here is how Ms. Kim concludes her article:

Of course, just as it is always a few bad seeds among politicians who end up taking their country onto a devastating path, it was only a handful of standout journalists who made a difference. But there’s reason to think that others will soon follow their successful example — and hopefully not only in South Korea.

Now we know that in South Korea that independent journalists that do not follow the established narrative will be jailed while in the United States under Donald Trump journalists can regularly publish ubiquitous “fake news” without the fear of being jailed.

In regards to the narrative against President Park, I have to wonder if she would have still been impeached if the public knew of the dubious nature of the tablet PC and the misinformation of the infamous seven hours?  Maybe she still would have been impeached because Choi did have oversized influence in the Park administration and was corrupt, but the conveniently found tablet PC in my opinion seemed to be the key piece of evidence that finally caused the public to widely turn on Park.

I would love to see an American journalist like Suki Kim revisit the whole narrative against President Park.  For example do they still believe JTBC’s claims about the tablet PC?  The one journalist in South Korea who did vigorously report on it was thrown in jail.  I would also like to see what American journalists think about the jailing of Byun Hee-jae.  Do they support his work?  Also does the American media agree with the Moon administration’s use of labor unions to protest and take control of the major media channels?  What about the Druking online opinion rigging scandal linked to the Moon administration?  I have yet to see any major media American journalist comment on any of this; maybe they just prefer to not challenge the established narrative?

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)

The whole “7-Hour Mystery” talking point involving former President Park Geun-hye and the sinking of the Sewol has never made any sense to me and the revealing of the actual timeline by investigators only further confirms this:

On the day of the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014, then-President Park Geun-hye spent crucial early hours when people could have been saved in her bedroom. As the hours passed, Park met with confidante Choi Soon-sil and got her hair done before starting to deal with the unfolding tragedy, according to a prosecution announcement on Wednesday.

The prosecution concluded that the entire timeline offered by the Park administration about her activities the day of the accident, which killed 304 people, was a fabrication aimed at covering up her slow responses.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office announced the outcome of its investigation into the Park government’s handling of the ferry disaster. Park’s absence in the critical early hours of a lackluster rescue operation generated enough controversy to be branded the “seven-hour mystery.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

Here is how the timeline played out:

According to the prosecution, the Sewol sent its first distress signal at 8:58 a.m. on April 16, 2014, and the Blue House’s crisis management center noticed the situation around 9:19 a.m. through a media report. The situation was shared among presidential aides at 9:24 a.m. using a text message system and the crisis management center completed its first situation report at 9:57 a.m. by contacting the Coast Guard.

That report was sent to Park’s residence around 10:12 a.m., but did not reach her. She was in her bedroom and the report was left on a table outside the room.

Around 10 a.m., Kim Jang-soo, who was head of the National Security Office, tried to telephone Park but she didn’t answer. He contacted An Bong-geun, a presidential secretary, and An drove to the residence and called to the president from outside her bedroom, the prosecution said. Park then came out from the bedroom and telephoned Kim around 10:22 a.m.

The prosecution said the first telephone briefing of Park, therefore, took place at 10:22 a.m., although the Park Blue House had earlier said the call took place at 10:15 a.m. Although Park ordered Kim to make sure there were no casualties in the accident, the most crucial hours of rescue operation had already passed, the prosecution said.

So the first report was sent to her at 10:12 AM, but was left outside her door.  The supposed Golden Time for rescue operations ended at 10:17.  Even if the first report to her was immediately received at 10:12, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, what difference would it have made?

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:

West Sea Coast Guard station ship 123 was tasked with patrolling the waters in Coastal Zone 3 near Jindo, South Jeolla Province the morning of the accident on Apr. 16. After the first 119 emergency call on the sinking from high school student Choi Deok-ha (who was later found dead), the Mokpo Coast Guard station situation room issued an order at around 8:57 to send ship 123 to the scene. At roughly 9:14, the vessel’s captain, surnamed Kim, was appointed commander for the accident scene. The boat was tasked with surveying the accident and performing a swift rescue effort according to the Coast Guard search and rescue manual.But after arriving at the scene at 9:30, Kim issued no evacuation order for the Sewol, despite ship 123 having a microphone system rigged up.

The manual’s instruction for capsizes is to “confirm the response from remaining personnel on the vessel and send a signal via loudspeaker.” Instead, the 47 minutes of “golden time” until the Sewol’s deck was fully submerged at 10:17 were wasted.The revelations about Kim‘s lack of urgency while in charge of rescue efforts at the accident scene were seen by many as especially disturbing. At the Gwangju District Court trial of Sewol crew members, Park Hyeong-ju of the Gachon University Interdisciplinary Skyscraper Disaster Prevention Center presented simulation findings showing all passengers could have been evacuated in six minutes and 17 seconds if ship 123 had given the order when Sewol captain Lee Jun-seok, 69, was rescued at 9:45.  [Hankyoreh]

This was incompetence by the ROK Coast Guard that was clearly unprepared to deal with such an accident and not something Park Geun-hye was going to be able to resolve in 5 minutes from the Blue House.  If people want to criticize her for lax government regulations that allowed the overweight ferry to operate and the poor disaster response by the Coast Guard I think that is fair.  However, to claim she could have personally did something to save those people that morning, but instead hung out in her bedroom is completely unfair in my opinion.

Considering that this woman had to be extradited from France, that leads me to believe that she knows her money was embezzled, but we will see what the courts decide:

A local court issued an arrest warrant on Friday for a daughter of a late businessman who controlled the operator of a sunken ferry that killed hundreds of passengers in 2014.

The Incheon District Court issued the warrant for Yoo Sum-na, the daughter of Yoo Byung-eun, the de facto owner of Cheonghaejin Marine Co., in light of risks that she “might flee or destroy evidence.”

She was arrested on charges of embezzling 4.6 billion won (US$4.09 million) from Cheonghaejin, the operator of Sewol.

The 51-year-old, who was extradited from France earlier this week, is said to deny the charges levied against her, claiming that the money her design company had received from her father’s company was “fair compensation for consulting services.”

She ran the company from June 2011 till December 2013 with a woman surnamed Ha who was close to her father. She is suspected to have coerced Cheonghaejin to pay her 2.5 billion won under the pretense of providing design consulting.

In another case, she is also accused of making another company of hers pay 2.1 billion won to a company founded by her brother without a justifiable reason.  [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.

It looks like if the ROK authorities want to prove President Park Geun-hye committed corruption they better find the evidence because she is not admitting to any wrong doing; likewise in regards to her actions during the Sewol ferry boat disaster:

President Park Geun-hye denied, Sunday, all allegations leveled against her regarding her mysterious whereabouts during the sinking of the Sewol and the corruption and influence-peddling scandal involving her confidant Choi Soon-sil.

Park held an unscheduled press conference at Cheong Wa Dae _ her first public appearance since she was impeached, Dec. 9 _ and she used the 50-minute meeting to dismiss allegations surrounding her as “unfair and absurd.”

Park stressed that she was on “normal duty” on the day of the Sewol sinking on April 16, 2014, dismissing allegations of her unknown whereabouts for seven hours as groundless rumors.

“First it was reported that I was having an affair with someone, and then I was engaged in an exorcism ritual. Then it was about me undergoing cosmetic surgery. It was utterly, utterly senseless,” she said.

“I’m sure to say that I was receiving reports on the tragic accident and keeping an eye on it as usual routine.”

She continued, “I ordered that rescuers should not miss any single person left behind through a thorough rescue operation, but then there was a report saying all have been rescued, which made me feel relieved. After it turned out to be false, I intended to head to the emergency measures headquarters immediately. But the security team delayed it. I rushed to the place as soon as everything was ready. I think I did whatever I had to do.”

Park denied the allegation that she had a beauty treatment on the day, saying, “It is totally not true. It is impossible to happen even from a commonsense point of view.”

She added that she did not meet anyone from outside Cheong Wa Dae except a hairdresser and someone who brought medicine for her neck.

She reiterated that she did not seek any personal interest or favor certain companies or figures, refuting charges of collusion with Choi, who is accused of having illegitimately meddled in state affairs and extorting tens of millions of dollars from conglomerates.

She repudiated the bribery allegations that Samsung made a large sum of donations to the two foundations controlled by Choi in return for the presidential office’s support of the conglomerate’s controversial merger of two Samsung units _ Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries. [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

Here we go again with netizen conspiracy theories:

The deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry two years ago was an accident, which left 295 dead and nine missing, not caused by the ship colliding with a submarine, the Navy said Tuesday.

The response comes after an online commenter named “Zaro — Netizens’ investigation team” argued that the ferry sinking was the result of the the passenger ship hitting a submarine in a nearly nine-hour-long documentary released Monday via YouTube.

But the Navy flatly denied the documentary as being based on “groundless” suspicions, saying there was no submarine in operation or conducting drills in the nearby waters on April 16, 2014, when the accident took place.

“The waters are 37 meters deep on average and not suitable for submarine action due to rapid currents and heavy commercial shipping and fishing boat traffic,” the Navy said in a statement.

In the documentary, the commenter pointed out that the route taken by the ill-fated ferry didn’t match conventional routes and external factors such as a submarine collision can explain the disaster. [The Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I see no way that the ROK Navy could keep something like this quiet considering the amount of people that would have known about it.