SK president condemns ferry crew
Print Edition
SOUTH Korean President Park Geun-hye said yesterday that the captain and some crew members of the sunken ferry committed “unforgivable, murderous behavior.”
As divers continued to search the interior of the submerged vessel, the confirmed death toll rose to 87, according to information from the coast guard posted for the victims’ families. About 220 people remain missing.
The captain initially told passengers to stay in their cabins and waited more than half an hour to issue an evacuation order as the ferry Sewol sank last Wednesday. By then the ship had tilted so much it is believed that many passengers were trapped inside.
First to escape
Park said at a Cabinet briefing, “What the captain and part of the crew did is unfathomable from the viewpoint of common sense. Unforgivable, murderous behavior.”
Park said instead of following a marine traffic controller’s instructions to “make the passengers escape,” the captain “told the passengers to stay put while they themselves became the first to escape.”
“Legally and ethically,” she said, “this is an unimaginable act.”
The captain, Lee Joon-seok, and two crew members have been arrested on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need, and prosecutors said yesterday that four other crew members have been detained.
Senior prosecutor Ahn Sang-don said prosecutors would decide within 48 hours whether to seek arrest warrants for the four: two first mates, a second mate and a chief engineer.
Many relatives of the dead and missing also have been critical of the government, which drew more outrage yesterday with the resignation of Song Young-chur, a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Security and Public Administration.
Song, chief of the Regional Development Policy Bureau, reportedly tried to take a commemorative photograph on Sunday evening on Jindo, an island near the sunken ferry, where government officials brief relatives of the missing.
Nervous wreck
Yonhap news agency reported that one family member shouted, “We are a nervous wreck here, and this is something to commemorate for you?”
About 250 of the missing and dead are students from a high school near Seoul who were on their way to the southern tourist island of Jeju.
Divers were unable for days to enter the submerged ship. Over the weekend they were able to use a new entryway through the dining hall, resulting in a jump in the discovery of corpses.
The cause of the disaster is not yet known, but prosecutors have said the ship made a sharp turn before listing.
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