Languish.org

QuoteBy HYUNG-JIN KIM
Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea -- Dozens of military boats and helicopters scrambled Wednesday to rescue more than 470 people, including 325 high school students on a school trip, after a ferry sank off South Korea's southern coast, officials said. At least one person died and 14 were said to have been injured.

The ferry with 476 people was sailing to the southern island of Jeju when it sent a distress call Wednesday morning after it began leaning to one side, according to Ministry of Security and Public Administration. The government said about 95 percent of the ship was submerged.

Two coast guard officers said that a 27-year-old woman named Park Ji-yeong died. One of the officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing department rules, said 168 passengers had been rescued so far, but gave no further details, including what caused the ship to sink or the conditions of the other passengers.

A student, Lim Hyung-min, told broadcaster YTN from a gym on a nearby island that he jumped into the ocean wearing a life jacket with other students and then swam to a nearby rescue boat.

"As the ship was shaking and tilting, we all tripped and bumped into each another," Lim said, adding that some people were bleeding. Once he jumped, the ocean "was so cold. ... I was hurrying, thinking that I wanted to live."

Local media ran photos showing the partially submerged ship tilting dramatically as helicopters flew overhead and rescue vessels and a small boat covered with an orange tarp over it floated nearby.

The students are from a high school in Ansan city near Seoul and were on their way to Jeju island for a four-day trip, according to a relief team set up by Gyeonggi Province, which governs the city.

The ship left Incheon port, just west of Seoul, on Tuesday evening, according to the state-run Busan Regional Maritime Affairs & Port Administration.

At the high school, students were sent home and parents gathered for news about the ferry.
Park Ji-hee, a first-year student, said she saw about a dozen parents crying at the school entrance and many cars and taxies gathered at the gate as she left in the morning.

She said some students in her classroom began to cry as they saw the news on their handsets. Teachers tried to soothe them, saying that the students on the ship would be fine.

A total of 16 helicopters, 34 rescue vessels and Navy divers were sent to the area, Lee Gyeong-og, a vice minister for South Korea's Public Administration and Security Ministry, told a televised news conference. He said President Park Geun-hye ordered a thorough rescue operation to prevent deaths. He said 14 had been injured so far, including one described as serious, and taken to hospitals.

Lee said that Navy special forces and an underwater demolition team would help rescue passengers who'd jumped into the water as the ship sank.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/15/4061985/reports-ferry-with-471-people.html#storylink=cpy

Quote(7th LD) Two people dead, 290 missing in sunken ferry

2014/04/16 15:34
SEOUL/JINDO, South Korea, April 16 (Yonhap) -- A passenger ship carrying more than 470 people, mostly high school students, sank off South Korea's southern coast on Wednesday, leaving at least two people, including one student, dead and about 290 others missing.

The government had earlier announced that 368 people were rescued, but officials later acknowledged there was an error in tallying up figures. More than 290 people still remain unaccounted for, they said.

Only about 180 have been rescued so far, more than five hours after the accident, officials said, amid growing fears that many of them could be trapped inside the sunken ship, though officials said some passengers could have been rescued by private fishing boats.

The 6,325-ton Sewol was carrying 477 people, including 325 students from a high school in Ansan, just south of Seoul, when it sent out a distress signal at 8:58 a.m. in waters 20 kilometers off the island of Byeongpoong, according to the Coast Guard.

The two dead were a 27-year-old female crew member and a high school student. The sailor was found dead in the ship while the student died after being rescued. Some 27 others were taken to hospitals with injuries, including broken bones and burns, officials said.

The accident prompted a massive rescue operation involving about 40 Coast Guard and military vessels and helicopters. Divers from the Navy's ship salvage unit (SSU) were also mobilized to search the sunken ship, officials said.

A U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship equipped with two helicopters, which was on its routine patrol mission in the western sea, was moving to the scene to help with the rescue operation, U.S. Forces Korea said.

Television footage showed the ship sinking on its side and rescue workers in orange uniforms trying to help passengers leave the vessel as helicopters were flying overhead. Rescued passengers were wrapped in beige blankets one by one after arriving at a nearby port.

The ill-fated ship completely capsized and sank in two hours.

The cause of the accident was not known, though survivors said they heard a banging noise before the ship suddenly started sinking. Speculation has arisen that the ship might have hit an underwater rock or collided with another vessel.

"There was a bang and then the ship suddenly tilted over," said a survivor identified by his surname Yoo, 57. "Downstairs were restaurants, shops and entertainment rooms, and those who were there are feared to have failed to escape."

   The government said the priority is rescue operations.

"We will try to determine the cause of the accident after rescue operations are over," said Second Vice Home Affairs Minister Lee Gyeong-og said during a press briefing in Seoul.

Lee said the government will mobilize all available resources to search for the missing.

The ferry set off from the western port of Incheon on Tuesday evening later than scheduled due to dense fog, and was to arrive at the southern resort island of Jeju later on Wednesday. The students were on their way to Jeju for a four-day school trip.

The ship, which plies between Incheon and Jeju twice a week, was built in 1994, is 146 meter long and 22 meter wide, and has the maximum capacity of carrying 921 people, 180 vehicles and 152 shipping containers at the same time.

President Park Geun-hye was immediately briefed on the accident, and she ordered maximum efforts to rescue all of the passengers, stressing that all available Navy, Coast Guard and other vessels nearby should be mobilized, her spokesman said.

khj@yna.co.kr

Quote from: Neil on April 16, 2014, 07:53:19 AM
I'm trying to find something I can enjoy about this, but I can't.  I just keep coming back to something like 'I hope they were all Zerg players' or something like that, but it's weak.

Quote from: dps on April 16, 2014, 01:40:50 PM

Quote from: Neil on April 16, 2014, 07:53:19 AM
I'm trying to find something I can enjoy about this, but I can't.  I just keep coming back to something like 'I hope they were all Zerg players' or something like that, but it's weak.

I was thinking more along the lines of "To bad it didn't sink while Timmay was on it", but that's pretty weak too.

Quote from: Neil on April 16, 2014, 07:53:19 AM
I'm trying to find something I can enjoy about this, but I can't.  I just keep coming back to something like 'I hope they were all Zerg players' or something like that, but it's weak.

Quote from: 11B4V on April 16, 2014, 02:27:12 PM

Quote from: Neil on April 16, 2014, 07:53:19 AM
I'm trying to find something I can enjoy about this, but I can't.  I just keep coming back to something like 'I hope they were all Zerg players' or something like that, but it's weak.

It would be over Tim's head anyway.

Quote from: mongers on April 16, 2014, 02:54:14 PM
Sad if true that many student were told to sit still,even as the ferry began to capsize. 

Note to self, in these situation always trust one's own instincts*.





* I'm fine with dying because of some decision I took, not at all keen on death because of some official incompetence.

Quote from: Neil on April 16, 2014, 07:53:19 AM
I'm trying to find something I can enjoy about this, but I can't.  I just keep coming back to something like 'I hope they were all Zerg players' or something like that, but it's weak.

Quote from: mongers on April 16, 2014, 02:54:14 PM
Note to self, in these situation always trust one's own instincts*.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2014, 07:28:23 PM

Quote from: mongers on April 16, 2014, 02:54:14 PM
Note to self, in these situation always trust one's own instincts*.

A long while back I read a story in The Atlantic about some ferry sinking in the Baltic.  One of the points the author tried to make was that the people who tried to help others died; those who scrambled to save themselves lived.  That included pushing others out of the way.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2014, 07:28:23 PM


A long while back I read a story in The Atlantic about some ferry sinking in the Baltic.  One of the points the author tried to make was that the people who tried to help others died; those who scrambled to save themselves lived.  That included pushing others out of the way.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 16, 2014, 07:28:23 PM

Quote from: mongers on April 16, 2014, 02:54:14 PM
Note to self, in these situation always trust one's own instincts*.

A long while back I read a story in The Atlantic about some ferry sinking in the Baltic.  One of the points the author tried to make was that the people who tried to help others died; those who scrambled to save themselves lived.  That included pushing others out of the way.

Quote
Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave in a Disaster
By Jeffrey Kluger Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010


It's hard to remember your manners when you think you're about to die. The human species may have developed an elaborate social and behavioral code, but we drop it fast when we're scared enough — as any stampeding mob reveals.

That primal push-pull is at work during wars, natural disasters and any other time our hides are on the line. It was perhaps never more poignantly played out than during the two greatest maritime disasters in history: the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania. A team of behavioral economists from Switzerland and Australia have published a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that takes an imaginative new look at who survived and who perished aboard the two ships, and what the demographics of death say about how well social norms hold up in a crisis.

The Lusitania and the Titanic are often thought of as sister vessels; they in fact belonged to two separate owners, but the error is understandable. Both ships were huge: the Titanic was carrying 2,207 passengers and crew on the night it went down; the Lusitania had 1,949. The mortality figures were even closer, with a 68.7% death rate aboard the Titanic and 67.3% for the Lusitania. What's more, the ships sank just three years apart — the Titanic was claimed by an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and the Lusitania by a German U-Boat on May 7, 1915. But on the decks and in the passageways and all the other places where people fought for their lives, the vessels' respective ends played out very differently.

To study those differences, the authors of the PNAS paper — Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich and David Savage and Benno Torgler of Queensland University — combed through Titanic and Lusitania data to gather the age, gender and ticket class for every passenger aboard, as well as the number of family members traveling with them. They also noted who survived and who didn't.

With this information in hand, they separated out one key group: all third-class passengers age 35 or older who were traveling with no children. The researchers figured that these were the people who faced the greatest likelihood of death because they were old enough, unfit enough and deep enough below the decks to have a hard time making it to a lifeboat. What's more, traveling without children may have made them slightly less motivated to struggle for survival and made other people less likely to let them pass. This demographic slice then became the so-called reference group, and the survival rates of all the other passenger groups were compared to theirs.

The results told a revealing tale. Aboard the Titanic, children under 16 years old were nearly 31% likelier than the reference group to have survived, but those on the Lusitania were 0.7% less likely. Males ages 16 to 35 on the Titanic had a 6.5% poorer survival rate than the reference group but did 7.9% better on the Lusitania. For females in the 16-to-35 group, the gap was more dramatic: those on the Titanic enjoyed a whopping 48.3% edge; on the Lusitania it was a smaller but still significant 10.4%. The most striking survival disparity — no surprise, given the era — was determined by class. The Titanic's first-class passengers had a 43.9% greater chance of making it off the ship and into a lifeboat than the reference group; the Lusitania's, remarkably, were 11.5% less likely.

There were a lot of factors behind these two distinct survival profiles — the most significant being time. Most shipwrecks are comparatively slow-motion disasters, but there are varying degrees of slow. The Lusitania slipped below the waves a scant 18 min. after the German torpedo hit it. The Titanic stayed afloat for 2 hr. 40 min. — and human behavior differed accordingly. On the Lusitania, the authors of the new paper wrote, "the short-run flight impulse dominated behavior. On the slowly sinking Titanic, there was time for socially determined behavioral patterns to reemerge."

That theory fits perfectly with the survival data, as all of the Lusitania's passengers were more likely to engage in what's known as selfish rationality — a behavior that's every bit as me-centered as it sounds and that provides an edge to strong, younger males in particular. On the Titanic, the rules concerning gender, class and the gentle treatment of children — in other words, good manners — had a chance to assert themselves.

Precisely how long it takes before decorum reappears is impossible to say, but simple biology would put it somewhere between the 18-min. and 2-hr. 40-min. windows that the two ships were accorded. "Biologically, fight-or-flight behavior has two distinct stages," the researchers wrote. "The short-term response [is] a surge in adrenaline production. This response is limited to a few minutes, because adrenaline degrades rapidly. Only after returning to homeostasis do the higher-order brain functions of the neocortex begin to override instinctual responses."

Once that happened aboard the Titanic, there were officers present to restore a relative sense of order and to disseminate information about what had just happened and what needed to be done next. Contemporary evacuation experts know that rapid communication of accurate information is critical in such emergencies.

Other variables beyond the question of time played important roles too. The Lusitania's passengers may have been more prone to stampede than those aboard the Titanic because they were traveling in wartime and were aware that they could come under attack at any moment. The very nature of the attack that sank the Lusitania — the sudden concussion of a torpedo, compared to the slow grinding of an iceberg — would also be likelier to spark panic. Finally, there was the simple fact that everyone aboard the Lusitania was aware of what had happened to the Titanic just three years earlier and thus disabused of the idea that there was any such thing as a ship that was too grand to sink — their own included.

The fact that the two vessels did sink is an unalterable fact of history, and while ship design and safety protocols have changed, the powder-keg nature of human behavior is the same as it ever was. The more scientists learn about how it played out in disasters of the past, the more they can help us minimize loss in the future.

QuoteWith this information in hand, they separated out one key group: all third-class passengers age 35 or older who were traveling with no children. The researchers figured that these were the people who faced the greatest likelihood of death because they were old enough, unfit enough and deep enough below the decks to have a hard time making it to a lifeboat. What's more, traveling without children may have made them slightly less motivated to struggle for survival and made other people less likely to let them pass. This demographic slice then became the so-called reference group, and the survival rates of all the other passenger groups were compared to theirs.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on April 16, 2014, 08:46:58 PM


The researchers can say what they want, but when push comes to shove, I'm bringing 225 lbs of Get The Fuck Out Of My Way with me--and I will go through your ass, your wife's ass, your mother's ass and your childrens' asses if I have to in order to do it.

Quote from: Monoriu on April 16, 2014, 07:47:32 PM
I will remember this  :ph34r:

Quote from: Monoriu on April 16, 2014, 08:50:28 PM

Quote from: CountDeMoney on April 16, 2014, 08:46:58 PM


The researchers can say what they want, but when push comes to shove, I'm bringing 225 lbs of Get The Fuck Out Of My Way with me--and I will go through your ass, your wife's ass, your mother's ass and your childrens' asses if I have to in order to do it.

And I will follow right after you :contract:

Quote from: Sheilbh on April 16, 2014, 08:53:36 PM

Quote from: Monoriu on April 16, 2014, 07:47:32 PM
I will remember this  :ph34r:

With all the love in the world, haven't you said you dislike the stair machine? Mastering a crowd on a violently tilting ship may be ambitious :console:

Quote from: Monoriu on April 16, 2014, 08:50:28 PM

Quote from: CountDeMoney on April 16, 2014, 08:46:58 PM


The researchers can say what they want, but when push comes to shove, I'm bringing 225 lbs of Get The Fuck Out Of My Way with me--and I will go through your ass, your wife's ass, your mother's ass and your childrens' asses if I have to in order to do it.

And I will follow right after you :contract:

Quote from: Razgovory on April 16, 2014, 08:58:21 PM
For a moment I thought this Tim's post and I was thinking "No, you won't.  CdM would take the opportunity to kill you before hand."  I don't he'd kill you though Mono.

Quote from: mongers on April 16, 2014, 08:56:24 PM

As you fall a flailing arm of yours will catch hold of Money's foot and the ferry's future great running team will be 3rd down and 14.

Quote from: alfred russel on April 16, 2014, 09:21:26 PM

Quote from: mongers on April 16, 2014, 08:56:24 PM

As you fall a flailing arm of yours will catch hold of Money's foot and the ferry's future great running team will be 3rd down and 14.

Good effort to reach across cultures.  :bowler:

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 16, 2014, 08:37:32 PM
Here we go

http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1969142,00.html

Quote
Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave in a Disaster
By Jeffrey Kluger Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010


It's hard to remember your manners when you think you're about to die. The human species may have developed an elaborate social and behavioral code, but we drop it fast when we're scared enough — as any stampeding mob reveals.

That primal push-pull is at work during wars, natural disasters and any other time our hides are on the line. It was perhaps never more poignantly played out than during the two greatest maritime disasters in history: the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania. A team of behavioral economists from Switzerland and Australia have published a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that takes an imaginative new look at who survived and who perished aboard the two ships, and what the demographics of death say about how well social norms hold up in a crisis.

The Lusitania and the Titanic are often thought of as sister vessels; they in fact belonged to two separate owners, but the error is understandable. Both ships were huge: the Titanic was carrying 2,207 passengers and crew on the night it went down; the Lusitania had 1,949. The mortality figures were even closer, with a 68.7% death rate aboard the Titanic and 67.3% for the Lusitania. What's more, the ships sank just three years apart — the Titanic was claimed by an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and the Lusitania by a German U-Boat on May 7, 1915. But on the decks and in the passageways and all the other places where people fought for their lives, the vessels' respective ends played out very differently.

To study those differences, the authors of the PNAS paper — Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich and David Savage and Benno Torgler of Queensland University — combed through Titanic and Lusitania data to gather the age, gender and ticket class for every passenger aboard, as well as the number of family members traveling with them. They also noted who survived and who didn't.

With this information in hand, they separated out one key group: all third-class passengers age 35 or older who were traveling with no children. The researchers figured that these were the people who faced the greatest likelihood of death because they were old enough, unfit enough and deep enough below the decks to have a hard time making it to a lifeboat. What's more, traveling without children may have made them slightly less motivated to struggle for survival and made other people less likely to let them pass. This demographic slice then became the so-called reference group, and the survival rates of all the other passenger groups were compared to theirs.

The results told a revealing tale. Aboard the Titanic, children under 16 years old were nearly 31% likelier than the reference group to have survived, but those on the Lusitania were 0.7% less likely. Males ages 16 to 35 on the Titanic had a 6.5% poorer survival rate than the reference group but did 7.9% better on the Lusitania. For females in the 16-to-35 group, the gap was more dramatic: those on the Titanic enjoyed a whopping 48.3% edge; on the Lusitania it was a smaller but still significant 10.4%. The most striking survival disparity — no surprise, given the era — was determined by class. The Titanic's first-class passengers had a 43.9% greater chance of making it off the ship and into a lifeboat than the reference group; the Lusitania's, remarkably, were 11.5% less likely.

There were a lot of factors behind these two distinct survival profiles — the most significant being time. Most shipwrecks are comparatively slow-motion disasters, but there are varying degrees of slow. The Lusitania slipped below the waves a scant 18 min. after the German torpedo hit it. The Titanic stayed afloat for 2 hr. 40 min. — and human behavior differed accordingly. On the Lusitania, the authors of the new paper wrote, "the short-run flight impulse dominated behavior. On the slowly sinking Titanic, there was time for socially determined behavioral patterns to reemerge."

That theory fits perfectly with the survival data, as all of the Lusitania's passengers were more likely to engage in what's known as selfish rationality — a behavior that's every bit as me-centered as it sounds and that provides an edge to strong, younger males in particular. On the Titanic, the rules concerning gender, class and the gentle treatment of children — in other words, good manners — had a chance to assert themselves.

Precisely how long it takes before decorum reappears is impossible to say, but simple biology would put it somewhere between the 18-min. and 2-hr. 40-min. windows that the two ships were accorded. "Biologically, fight-or-flight behavior has two distinct stages," the researchers wrote. "The short-term response [is] a surge in adrenaline production. This response is limited to a few minutes, because adrenaline degrades rapidly. Only after returning to homeostasis do the higher-order brain functions of the neocortex begin to override instinctual responses."

Once that happened aboard the Titanic, there were officers present to restore a relative sense of order and to disseminate information about what had just happened and what needed to be done next. Contemporary evacuation experts know that rapid communication of accurate information is critical in such emergencies.

Other variables beyond the question of time played important roles too. The Lusitania's passengers may have been more prone to stampede than those aboard the Titanic because they were traveling in wartime and were aware that they could come under attack at any moment. The very nature of the attack that sank the Lusitania — the sudden concussion of a torpedo, compared to the slow grinding of an iceberg — would also be likelier to spark panic. Finally, there was the simple fact that everyone aboard the Lusitania was aware of what had happened to the Titanic just three years earlier and thus disabused of the idea that there was any such thing as a ship that was too grand to sink — their own included.

The fact that the two vessels did sink is an unalterable fact of history, and while ship design and safety protocols have changed, the powder-keg nature of human behavior is the same as it ever was. The more scientists learn about how it played out in disasters of the past, the more they can help us minimize loss in the future.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on April 16, 2014, 09:36:54 PM

For an Englishman, Mongers has an excellent grasp of the Pittsburgh Steelers' offense.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 16, 2014, 08:37:32 PM
Here we go

http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1969142,00.html

Quote
Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave in a Disaster
By Jeffrey Kluger Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010


It's hard to remember your manners when you think you're about to die. The human species may have developed an elaborate social and behavioral code, but we drop it fast when we're scared enough — as any stampeding mob reveals.

That primal push-pull is at work during wars, natural disasters and any other time our hides are on the line. It was perhaps never more poignantly played out than during the two greatest maritime disasters in history: the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania. A team of behavioral economists from Switzerland and Australia have published a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that takes an imaginative new look at who survived and who perished aboard the two ships, and what the demographics of death say about how well social norms hold up in a crisis.

The Lusitania and the Titanic are often thought of as sister vessels; they in fact belonged to two separate owners, but the error is understandable. Both ships were huge: the Titanic was carrying 2,207 passengers and crew on the night it went down; the Lusitania had 1,949. The mortality figures were even closer, with a 68.7% death rate aboard the Titanic and 67.3% for the Lusitania. What's more, the ships sank just three years apart — the Titanic was claimed by an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and the Lusitania by a German U-Boat on May 7, 1915. But on the decks and in the passageways and all the other places where people fought for their lives, the vessels' respective ends played out very differently.

To study those differences, the authors of the PNAS paper — Bruno Frey of the University of Zurich and David Savage and Benno Torgler of Queensland University — combed through Titanic and Lusitania data to gather the age, gender and ticket class for every passenger aboard, as well as the number of family members traveling with them. They also noted who survived and who didn't.

With this information in hand, they separated out one key group: all third-class passengers age 35 or older who were traveling with no children. The researchers figured that these were the people who faced the greatest likelihood of death because they were old enough, unfit enough and deep enough below the decks to have a hard time making it to a lifeboat. What's more, traveling without children may have made them slightly less motivated to struggle for survival and made other people less likely to let them pass. This demographic slice then became the so-called reference group, and the survival rates of all the other passenger groups were compared to theirs.

The results told a revealing tale. Aboard the Titanic, children under 16 years old were nearly 31% likelier than the reference group to have survived, but those on the Lusitania were 0.7% less likely. Males ages 16 to 35 on the Titanic had a 6.5% poorer survival rate than the reference group but did 7.9% better on the Lusitania. For females in the 16-to-35 group, the gap was more dramatic: those on the Titanic enjoyed a whopping 48.3% edge; on the Lusitania it was a smaller but still significant 10.4%. The most striking survival disparity — no surprise, given the era — was determined by class. The Titanic's first-class passengers had a 43.9% greater chance of making it off the ship and into a lifeboat than the reference group; the Lusitania's, remarkably, were 11.5% less likely.

There were a lot of factors behind these two distinct survival profiles — the most significant being time. Most shipwrecks are comparatively slow-motion disasters, but there are varying degrees of slow. The Lusitania slipped below the waves a scant 18 min. after the German torpedo hit it. The Titanic stayed afloat for 2 hr. 40 min. — and human behavior differed accordingly. On the Lusitania, the authors of the new paper wrote, "the short-run flight impulse dominated behavior. On the slowly sinking Titanic, there was time for socially determined behavioral patterns to reemerge."

That theory fits perfectly with the survival data, as all of the Lusitania's passengers were more likely to engage in what's known as selfish rationality — a behavior that's every bit as me-centered as it sounds and that provides an edge to strong, younger males in particular. On the Titanic, the rules concerning gender, class and the gentle treatment of children — in other words, good manners — had a chance to assert themselves.

Precisely how long it takes before decorum reappears is impossible to say, but simple biology would put it somewhere between the 18-min. and 2-hr. 40-min. windows that the two ships were accorded. "Biologically, fight-or-flight behavior has two distinct stages," the researchers wrote. "The short-term response [is] a surge in adrenaline production. This response is limited to a few minutes, because adrenaline degrades rapidly. Only after returning to homeostasis do the higher-order brain functions of the neocortex begin to override instinctual responses."

Once that happened aboard the Titanic, there were officers present to restore a relative sense of order and to disseminate information about what had just happened and what needed to be done next. Contemporary evacuation experts know that rapid communication of accurate information is critical in such emergencies.

Other variables beyond the question of time played important roles too. The Lusitania's passengers may have been more prone to stampede than those aboard the Titanic because they were traveling in wartime and were aware that they could come under attack at any moment. The very nature of the attack that sank the Lusitania — the sudden concussion of a torpedo, compared to the slow grinding of an iceberg — would also be likelier to spark panic. Finally, there was the simple fact that everyone aboard the Lusitania was aware of what had happened to the Titanic just three years earlier and thus disabused of the idea that there was any such thing as a ship that was too grand to sink — their own included.

The fact that the two vessels did sink is an unalterable fact of history, and while ship design and safety protocols have changed, the powder-keg nature of human behavior is the same as it ever was. The more scientists learn about how it played out in disasters of the past, the more they can help us minimize loss in the future.

QuoteJust 75 of the 325 students who were on board were among the rescued, authorities said.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 16, 2014, 08:37:32 PM
Here we go

http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1969142,00.html

Quote
Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave in a Disaster
By Jeffrey Kluger Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010


It's hard to remember your manners when you think you're about to die. The human species may have developed an elaborate social and behavioral code, but we drop it fast when we're scared enough — as any stampeding mob reveals.

That primal push-pull is at work during wars, natural disasters and any other time our hides are on the line. It was perhaps never more poignantly played out than during the two greatest maritime disasters in history: the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania.

Quote from: grumbler on April 17, 2014, 06:41:11 AM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 16, 2014, 08:37:32 PM
Here we go

http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1969142,00.html

Quote
Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave in a Disaster
By Jeffrey Kluger Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010


It's hard to remember your manners when you think you're about to die. The human species may have developed an elaborate social and behavioral code, but we drop it fast when we're scared enough — as any stampeding mob reveals.

That primal push-pull is at work during wars, natural disasters and any other time our hides are on the line. It was perhaps never more poignantly played out than during the two greatest maritime disasters in history: the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania.

I had to stop there.  No one who thinks that these are the "two greatest maritime disasters in history" could have anything worth reading on the topic.

Quote from: HVC on April 17, 2014, 06:52:22 AM
I don't know much about maritime disasters, but what would you consider the two worst. Not saying the two mentioned are, I'm actually curious now. I would guess the Halifax explosion would count, if that counts are a maritime disaster, but it did involve a ship.

Quote from: Razgovory on April 17, 2014, 07:25:53 AM
General Slocum.  It was more of a riverine disaster.  The worst I know of was the Goya, a German transport sunk during the war.

Quote from: grumbler on April 17, 2014, 07:00:57 AM
The Mont Blanc explosion was a maritime disaster, and killed more people than either Titanic or Lusitania. But there were a number of disasters that killed more than both ships combined, like the passenger ferry that was hit and sunk in the Philippines in the 80s, or the one that sank in Shanghai just after the war.

That doesn't even get into warship sinkings, or the loss of whole fleets in the ancient world.

Quote from: Razgovory on April 17, 2014, 07:25:53 AM
General Slocum.  It was more of a riverine disaster.  The worst I know of was the Goya, a German transport sunk during the war.

Quote from: Razgovory on April 17, 2014, 07:25:53 AM
General Slocum.  It was more of a riverine disaster.  The worst I know of was the Goya, a German transport sunk during the war.

Quote from: Valmy on April 17, 2014, 08:19:11 AM
The General McClellan refused to leave shore without 20 more ferries.

Quote from: The Brain on April 17, 2014, 08:23:08 AM
Don't knock General Scrotum.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 16, 2014, 11:41:21 PM
:cry:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303887804579504373992846340

QuoteJust 75 of the 325 students who were on board were among the rescued, authorities said.

Quote from: Valmy on April 17, 2014, 08:19:11 AM
The General McClellan refused to leave shore without 20 more ferries.

Quote from: Razgovory on April 16, 2014, 09:03:04 PM
You've given this alot of thought...

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 16, 2014, 11:41:21 PM
:cry:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303887804579504373992846340

QuoteJust 75 of the 325 students who were on board were among the rescued, authorities said.

Quote from: HVC on April 17, 2014, 12:14:13 PM
if PDH was their teacher he'd still expect their field trip report by the end of the week  :P

Quote from: alfred russel on April 17, 2014, 04:04:52 PM

Quote from: HVC on April 17, 2014, 12:14:13 PM

if PDH was their teacher he'd still expect their field trip report by the end of the week  :P

Quote from: HVC on April 17, 2014, 12:14:13 PM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 16, 2014, 11:41:21 PM
:cry:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303887804579504373992846340

QuoteJust 75 of the 325 students who were on board were among the rescued, authorities said.

if PDH was their teacher he'd still expect their field trip report by the end of the week  :P

QuoteThe captain was among the first to flee. Only a couple of the 44 life rafts aboard were deployed. The hundreds of passengers were instructed over the intercom to "stay inside and wait" as the ship leaned to one side and began to sink, dragging scores of students down with it.

"I repeatedly told people to calm themselves and stay where they were for an hour," Kang Hae-seong, the communications officer on the South Korean ferry that sank on Wednesday, said from his hospital bed. He added that he could not recall taking part in any evacuation drills for the ship, and that when a real emergency came, "I didn't have time to look at the manual for evacuation."

...

James T. Shirley Jr., an accident investigator in Newtown, Pa., said that in the two and a half hours it took the ship to sink, the crew "certainly had enough time to get most of the people off."

"I don't understand why the crew would be instructing passengers to stay inside the ship," Mr. Shirley said. "I would think that if nothing else, they would be getting them outside with life jackets on so if it sank, they could at least get into the cold water with their jackets."

Capt. William H. Doherty, a maritime safety expert at Nexus Consulting Group who commanded Navy and merchant ships, said there was "clearly a breakdown in safety training" on the South Korean ferry, a failure he said could be attributed to its officers and to Korean regulators.

"When they issued a safety certification for the ship, they had to certify that the crew was trained," Captain Doherty said, noting the communications officer's admission that he had not taken part in an evacuation drill. "You have to satisfy yourself that this crew is trained in all emergency situations."

...

According to survivors, the students were having a morning break after breakfast on Wednesday, roaming through the floors and snapping pictures on the deck, when the ship began tilting.

When the situation became critical, survivors said, many students were still on the third floor, where the cafeteria and game rooms were.

"I don't remember that there was any safety instruction before we boarded the ship," said Kim Su-bin, 16, a Danwon student who survived by climbing out of the sinking ship and jumping into the water. "Life jackets were on the fourth floor where the sleeping cabins were, but those who were on the third floor at the time had no life jackets."

...
Inside the ferry, chaos unfolded, survivors said, as the walls and floor seemed to exchange positions. Bottles and dishes fell. The ship's twisting stairways became almost impossible to negotiate. Passengers were tossed to one side. Trays and soup bowls overturned, said Song Ji-cheol, a college student who worked part-time in the cafeteria.

"All of a sudden, we were submerged," he said. "I tried to hold on to the tables, but they were moving around, too."

At some point, survivors said, the lights went out.

"When the ship began tilting, there was a thudding noise, and I thought it was the noise made by students bumping into the walls," Han Hee-min said on Thursday in a hospital in Ansan, the city south of Seoul where Danwon High School is. "I had a life jacket, so I floated. Some friends grabbed my leg, and I don't know what happened to them."

Grainy video footage taken with a smartphone and sent to a relative showed frightened passengers huddled in the corner of a room as a voice on the ship's intercom urged people to "stay inside and wait because the cabins are safer." Gwon Ji-hyuck, 16, said he had heard that broadcast as well.

Han Sang-hyuk, 16, blamed the crew's instructions for the high number of missing people, saying that those who stayed in their rooms or were caught in small alleyways between corridors would not have been able to escape.

Alan Loynd, a sea disaster investigator and the chairman of the International Tugmasters Association, would not comment directly on the crew's decisions. But "as a general rule," he said, "if a ferry started listing, I wouldn't be staying below decks."

The communications officer, Mr. Kang, 32, said that he and another crew member had been forced to make a quick decision. They thought that if passengers fled in a panicked rush, it could make matters worse, he said.

Shin Seong-hee, a Danwon student, was among those who heeded the advice. In a text message she sent to her father, she said the crew had told her that "it was more dangerous to move."

Shin Seong-hee, a Danwon student, was among those who heeded the advice. In a text message she sent to her father, she said the crew had told her that "it was more dangerous to move."

Her father texted back, "I know the rescuers are coming but why don't you try to come outside?"

"I can't because the ship is tilting too much," she said, in a text displayed by her sister. Ms. Shin has not been heard from since.

Some survivors gave accounts of professionalism and self-sacrifice by crew members. Kim Su-bin, the Danwon student who climbed out and jumped into the water, thanked Park Ji-young, a crew member who was found dead on Wednesday, for calming students and staying behind without a life jacket after helping students escape.

"Bring my child back alive!" some parents yelled on Thursday when President Park Geun-hye visited a gymnasium that local officials had turned into a shelter for grieving families. Ms. Park promised "all available resources" for the rescue efforts, and "a thorough investigation and stern punishment for those responsible."

An editorial in the country's leading conservative daily newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, which has been mostly supportive of Ms. Park's government, denounced it for "floundering."

"Above all, the people must have felt deeply that South Korea is a country that doesn't value human lives," it said. "Hundreds of passengers sank with the ship, but its captain and most of its crew came out alive."

Jeon Young-jun, 61, a crew member, said the chief engineer had told his team to desert the ship immediately, contrary to the intercom instructions for passengers.

"My colleagues and I were sure we would die if we didn't get out immediately, because we knew that the ship tilting about 48 degrees means big danger," he said. "There was nothing else to think about."

Quote from: Monoriu on April 18, 2014, 07:27:14 AM
I struggle to think of something lower than ordering hundreds of school kids to stay put in a sinking ship.  That's beyond criminal.

Quote from: Monoriu on April 18, 2014, 07:27:14 AM
I struggle to think of something lower than ordering hundreds of school kids to stay put in a sinking ship.  That's beyond criminal.

Quote'Surviving alone is too painful – I will be teacher in afterlife'

Malcolm Moore Jindo, South Korea – Published 19 April 2014 02:30 AM
The police found his body in the early afternoon, hanging by his belt from a tree, with a note in his wallet expressing his grief at the deaths of his On Wednesday morning, 52-year-old Kang Min-gyu, the deputy headmaster of Danwon high school outside Seoul, had been having breakfast with his teenage charges in the cafeteria of the Sewol ferry as it made its way to the holiday island of Jeju.

His text messages back to his colleagues at the school suggest he did everything by the book. "Water is rushing in," he wrote at 8.55am, shortly after the distress call was first made. "The boat is leaning 15 degrees, the coastguard is here, all the students have their life jackets on," he wrote at 9.11am.

But while Mr Kang and 75 students were rescued, 14 died and another 236 remain in a watery grave, trapped inside the submerged hull.

"Surviving alone is too painful while 200 remain unaccounted for. I take full responsibility. I pushed ahead with the school trip," his note said.

"I will once again become a teacher in the afterlife for my students whose bodies have not been discovered."

After the police cut down his body, he was taken across the road to the Jindo funeral parlour and cremated. His ashes, according to his wishes, will be scattered on the ocean where the Sewol sank.

The news of his death caused barely a ripple inside the Jindo gymnasium, where Mr Kang had stayed with hundreds of parents, waiting for news from the rescue operation.

As hope has faded, the gymnasium has become a cauldron of anger and despair. Yesterday, medical staff darted around the hall, attending to parents convulsing and screaming in grief. At least 20 parents have had treatment for shock at the local hospital, a doctor said.

Relatives were quick to blame Mr Kang and other teachers for the fate of their children. "I saw him on Thursday afternoon around 4pm," said Kwon Hyeok-ryung (55), whose brother-in-law was also a teacher at the school, but is still missing.

"He felt a lot of responsibility, and he was under a lot of pressure. The parents blamed him for surviving. They screamed, 'How can you be a teacher and let your students die? How can you live with yourself?' They were grabbing him, trying to beat him."

About an hour after Mr Kwon saw Mr Kang, he walked out of the gym and disappeared. A police search began during the night.

Meanwhile, prosecutors were busy last night filing arrest warrants for Lee Jun-seok (69), the captain of the Sewol, the third mate who was steering the ship at the time of the disaster and another crew member. The three men are likely to face criminal charges of deserting their ship after being among the first to leave the boat.

Kang Hye-sung (31), the crew member who made the fatal announcements telling passengers to remain where they were, said he had been following orders from Capt Lee. "It was so hectic in the ship that I couldn't even think to make any judgment," he said.

At the wharf in Jindo, hundreds more parents and relatives continued to hurl abuse at South Korean officials as the hunt for survivors became an operation to retrieve corpses.

"You have stopped the rescue, now you just want to pull out dead bodies." (© Daily Telegraph, London)

Irish Independent

Quote from: Capetan Mihali on April 18, 2014, 09:10:02 PM
I'm not clear what it is he did wrong here, other than not drowning to death.  Did he mismanage the crisis (to the extent he could manage it in his role as principal)?  Or somehow prioritize himself over his students?

Quote from: DGuller on April 18, 2014, 11:37:27 AM
It's easy to blame the captain, but how many of us would be more prepared for such a calamity?  Personally, if I were in his place, I wouldn't even know where the gas pedal was on that thing.

Quote from: Ed Anger on April 18, 2014, 09:51:33 PM
I'm beginning to wonder if Publius Claudius Pulcher wasn't the captain.

Quote from: grumbler on April 18, 2014, 09:48:21 PM

Quote from: Capetan Mihali on April 18, 2014, 09:10:02 PM
I'm not clear what it is he did wrong here, other than not drowning to death.  Did he mismanage the crisis (to the extent he could manage it in his role as principal)?  Or somehow prioritize himself over his students?

He left before his charges were safe.  You don't leave children you are responsible for to die.  If he knew enough to leave, he knew enough to insist that all the students leave.  If not everyone could be saved, as many students as possible are saved, and no teachers survive.

Quote from: The Brain on April 19, 2014, 12:41:26 AM

Quote from: Ed Anger on April 18, 2014, 09:51:33 PM
I'm beginning to wonder if Publius Claudius Pulcher wasn't the captain.

Unlikely.

Quote from: Ed Anger on April 19, 2014, 05:57:25 AM

Quote from: The Brain on April 19, 2014, 12:41:26 AM

Quote from: Ed Anger on April 18, 2014, 09:51:33 PM
I'm beginning to wonder if Publius Claudius Pulcher wasn't the captain.

Unlikely.

Still mad about the chicken thing?

Quote from: DGuller on April 18, 2014, 11:37:27 AM
It's easy to blame the captain, but how many of us would be more prepared for such a calamity?

Quote"In a bitterly ironic twist to the saga, the Sewol's captain appeared in a 2010 promotional video promising that the ferry route between Incheon and Jeju was safe, provided passengers followed the crew's instructions.

"Passengers who take our ship ... can enjoy a safe and pleasant trip, and I believe it is safer than any other vehicle as long as they follow the instructions of our crew members," Lee said, according to transcripts of the message released by South Korean media."

QuoteFerry disaster a grim test for civilian divers
Last Updated: Monday, April 21, 2014, 13:49
 

Jindo: Professional taekwondo teacher Lee Jun-Ho took up scuba diving eight years ago as a fun hobby.

It was never meant to lead him to the black, nightmarish world of a submerged ferry looking for the bloated bodies of hundreds of schoolchildren.

Last Wednesday, Lee, 41, was preparing for another day teaching children at his private taekwondo school in Gimhae, near the southern South Korean port city of Busan, when he heard reports of an unfolding ferry disaster off the southwest coast.

As the scale of the tragedy became apparent, Lee, who qualified as a diving instructor in 2008, packed his dive gear in his car and drove 160 miles (256 km) to Jindo island where a massive rescue effort was taking shape.

There he found scores of other civilian divers who had come individually or with their clubs to volunteer in the search for survivors in the submerged ferry, that was carrying 476 people -- most of them high school students -- when it sank.

"I have two young sons of my own," Lee told AFP in Jindo harbour Monday as he prepared to leave for another underwater search of the 6,825-tonne ship.

"The thought of all those schoolchildren trapped or worse was just unbearable, and I thought I had a duty to try and help save them," he said.

More than 500 divers, including elite South Korean Navy Seals, have been taking part in the rescue efforts -- many of them civilian divers with no real experience of such work.

"It was a bit of a mess at the beginning," Lee acknowledged, with military, coastguard and civilian dive teams struggling to coordinate their efforts.

The conditions in the immediate aftermath of the sinking were extremely challenging, with powerful currents and heavy swells buffeting the divers as they sought a way into the inverted, submerged ferry in near-zero visibility.

Not everybody welcomed the civilian divers' commitment.

"This isn't leisure diving. It's difficult, dangerous work and it's definitely not for amateurs," said Kim Do-Hyun, president of the Ship Salvage Unit, a grouping of former navy divers.

"If something happens to the volunteers, who will take responsibility? The authorities should have stepped in immediately and stopped them going in the water," Kim told AFP by phone from Seoul.

Most feel the civilian divers have proved their worth, and the sheer scale of the rescue and recovery task has clearly encouraged officials to turn a blind eye to qualifications in exchange for more manpower.

As of Monday morning, the confirmed death toll from the disaster stood at 64 but was expected to rise dramatically with 238 people still unaccounted for -- most of them schoolchildren.

With any hope of finding passengers surviving in air pockets all but extinguished, the rescue has effectively transitioned into a grim recovery operation.

And it was a team of civilian divers who retrieved the first bodies from inside the ferry early Sunday.

"The mood changed a lot after that," Lee said, with many of the amateurs deciding to leave once it became clear there were no survivors to be rescued.

But Lee stayed on.

"I'm proud of what we did and are still doing here, although it was obviously a huge disappointment not to find anyone alive.

"It's exhausting, but it's a job that needs to be done," he said.

Asked how he coped with the grim task of finding and recovering the bodies of the children, Lee's relentless optimism gave way.

"I really don't want to talk about that," he said.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on April 21, 2014, 06:14:39 AM
Well he was wrong, now wasn't he?

Quote from: Malthus on April 21, 2014, 09:40:28 AM
Clearly, this captain was not a believer in the Birkenhead Drill.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 19, 2014, 11:50:00 PM
Two of the people at my church service knew teachers who went down with the ship.  :(

EDIT: Confirmed death toll at 52 :(
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/20/world/asia/south-korea-ship-sinking/

Quote from: grumbler on April 21, 2014, 07:22:20 AM

Quote from: CountDeMoney on April 21, 2014, 06:14:39 AM
Well he was wrong, now wasn't he?

Mr. President, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 21, 2014, 06:55:42 AM
Makes it even worse that he's in Jindo, home to the worst liquor in the history of human civilization.

Quote from: Caliga on April 21, 2014, 12:01:17 PM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 21, 2014, 06:55:42 AM
Makes it even worse that he's in Jindo, home to the worst liquor in the history of human civilization.

Do they force you to drink it when you're there or something? :)

QuoteEun-su Choi had made the ferry journey from Incheon in the north-west to the southern island of Jeju hundreds of times. He had just had breakfast and gone up on the deck for a smoke when disaster struck.

"All of a sudden the ship tilted and started to sink. Containers started to fall off into the sea, and I realised we were going to capsize.

"I was clinging on to the handrail. I tried to save some of the students in the cafeteria. They were sliding around on their knees by the cashier's desk."

He added: "We were trying to pull them up with a fire hose, but it was very difficult to rescue them. We then decided to climb up, but I now regret it."

He said his friend managed to pull a six-year-old girl to safety after she was passed by her parents and other passengers, hand to hand, from inside the ferry.

He said the parents and passengers, who did not survive the ordeal, were "the bravest people of all".

All of the people he saw helping the girl were swept away by the water, he added.

Quote
Ferry Crew Gave False Accounts of Disaster

Accounts by the captain and crew of the ill-fated ferry Sewol that the ship had tilted too much to allow them to reach the cabins and manipulate the life boats have turned out to be completely false.

Photos taken from a Coast Guard ship that arrived first at the scene at around 9:37 a.m. last Wednesday show that they were lying.

Asked whether he attempted to manipulate the life boats, the second mate of the Sewol, who was arrested on Tuesday, said he tried, but it was too difficult to reach them. "We tried everything but kept on slipping and couldn't reach them," police quoted him as saying.

Captain Lee Joon-seok and other crew members all claimed that it was hard even to move around since the boat had already capsized.

But the photos published by the Korea Coast Guard on Tuesday show one rescue worker walking toward the lifeboats on the deck of the Sewol as soon as he boards the ship. He attempted to free the lifeboats starting from the back, but none of them would budge.

In a picture showing the rescue worker investigating the 10th lifeboat, a man believed to be a crewmember is seen running out of the wheelhouse. Clad in a blue work uniform, the man hops on the rescue boat that lies around 5 m away.

That flatly contradicts the account that it was hard to move around.

The rescue worker checked 12 lifeboats but was unable to free them from their casing. He kicked the 13th lifeboat casing and finally succeeded in releasing it into the ocean. But it did not inflate properly as it floated on the surface.

Even when the rescue boat arrived at the scene, no passengers could be spotted on the wide deck and roof. If the captain had instructed the passengers to abandon ship, at least dozens of high school students could have survived.

An official at the joint investigation team said, "In those circumstances any crewmember who was familiar with the ship could have ordered the passengers to leave, but it appears that none of them even bothered to think about the passengers."

QuoteJindo, South Korea (CNN) -- South Korean authorities searched the offices of the company that owns the sunken ferry Sewol on Wednesday, prosecutors confirmed to CNN, broadening a criminal investigation that has already ensnared 11 members of the ill-fated ship's crew.

Investigators also searched the offices of 20 organizations affiliated with Cheonghaejin Marine Co. as well as the home of Yoo Byung-eun, a billionaire whose family appears to control the company, according to the semiofficial Yonhap News Agency.

Yoo is known in South Korea as the "millionaire with no face" because he rarely appears in public. According to major South Korean newspapers, he also has an artistic alter ego -- Ahae -- as a photographer who has won international acclaim.

His website appears to show Yoo taking pictures, but his face is not visible.

Through an investment vehicle and subsidiary, Yoo and his two sons control the shipping company that operated the ferry. Korean tax authorities say that under the family's ownership, the ferry company has been struggling and reported a loss last year.

Days after the ferry sank, the company sent out its president to apologize, but not Yoo -- who's had a brush with bad publicity before.

In 1987, he was a religious cult leader. More than 30 people from his group were found dead, bound and gagged in a factory outside of Seoul. Officials investigated the incident as a mass murder-suicide, but found no evidence tying the event to Yoo.

Prosecutors in the South Korean city of Busan are also investigating the private organization responsible for inspecting and certifying ships for the South Korean government, Yonhap reported.

Investigators are looking for any evidence of possible wrongdoing in relation to the Korean Register of Shipping's safety inspection of the Sewol, the news agency reported, citing an unnamed prosecutor.

The Sewol sank April 16 during a routine trip from Incheon to the resort island of Jeju. Among its 476 passengers and crew were more than 300 high school students on a field trip.

Authorities said Thursday the death toll had climbed to 169, leaving 133 people still missing.

Eleven members of the Sewol's crew, including its captain, have been arrested in connection with the disaster.

Capt. Lee Joon-seok and some other crew members have been criticized for failing to evacuate the sinking ship quickly and for giving orders for passengers to remain where they were. Lee has said he was worried about the cold water, strong currents and lack of rescue vessels.

Lee and others have also drawn public anger for leaving the ship while many passengers remained on board.

Authorities still do not know precisely what caused the incident. It did not appear that the ship was overloaded, according to figures provided by the company and the South Korean coast guard. But coast guard officials said investigators won't know for sure how much cargo the ship was carrying until it is salvaged.

Hopes fading

South Korean officials continue to call their operation a search-and-rescue mission, but hopes are fading that survivors may yet be found.

Some 700 divers are participating in the search, according to Ko Myung-suk, a spokesman for the joint task force coordinating the effort. He said 36 fishing boats were positioned around the area to prevent bodies being carried away by currents.

Rescue officials said Wednesday that divers have yet to find an air pocket on the third or fourth decks, where most of the passenger bedrooms and the ship's cafeteria are located.

Rescuers haven't found a single survivor since 174 people were rescued the day the ship sank one week ago.

Many of the bodies pulled from the ferry have come from bedrooms on the capsized ship's fourth deck, said Ko.

Divers had expected to find passengers inside the third-floor cafeteria but failed to find any, the South Korean coast guard said.

While divers still have many rooms to search, no air pockets have been found on either deck, authorities said.

Students remembered

Grief over the sinking has spread across the Korean Peninsula. Even South Korea's nemesis, North Korea, sent condolences Wednesday.

More than two-thirds of those on board the ferry were students from Danwon High School in Ansan, an hour's drive south of Seoul.

On Wednesday, some of their faces stared out from photos amid a huge bank of white flowers at a basketball area in Ansan that has been converted into a temporary memorial.

A permanent memorial is being planned for a park in Ansan.

Hundreds of people filed through the memorial Wednesday, passing about 50 large wreaths on their way to the wall of flowers and pictures.

Somber music played as visitors, including friends and relatives, passed quietly among the tributes. Some wept.

One man, from Seoul, has no ties to the school but came to grieve for the young lives lost.

"I have a daughter," the man told CNN's Nic Robertson. "I think of her alone in black waters. It's just so terrible. I'm angry that I couldn't do anything. So helpless."

The disaster has taken a devastating toll on the high school, where classes are due to resume Thursday.

The school is missing most of its sophomores and a vice principal who was rescued from the ferry but found dead two days after the sinking. He'd apparently hanged himself from a tree.

Lee Seung-min, 17, said one of her closest girlfriends is among the missing. She said she still holds out hope that her friend will return despite the increasingly slim chances of finding survivors.

Before the field trip, the two girls had talked about what universities they might attend, she said.

QuoteThe Wall Street Journal reports that the Sewol was loaded with 3,608 tons of cargo on its final journey — over three times more than the maximum recommended weight of 987 tons.

After acquiring the Sewol in 2012, operators Chonghaejin Marine Co. added 240 additional cabins, increasing passenger capacity by more than 150 people but also raising the vessel's weight by almost 240 tons. It has also been established that the ferry was being operated despite a request made by the captain on April 1 for repairs to the steering gear.

...

According to Chonghaejin's audit report for last year, the company spent just $521 on crew training, including evacuation drills. By comparison, a competitor, Daea Express Shipping, spent 20 times that amount.

Quote from: sbr on April 24, 2014, 08:25:37 PM
Let the Market decide.  If people want to shove kids onto an overloaded ferry with no emergency equipment and training it should be their god given right to do so.

QuoteOne of the survivors, Park Joon-hyuk, spends his days under medical observation at the Korea University Medical Center in Ansan, a satellite city of Seoul. Besides a routine 30-minute daily checkup, there isn't much for him to do but read books, play board-games, talk with friends who visit him and check his smartphone for the latest news on the search for ferry victims.

He misses horsing around with his classmates during school recess. He wants to go back in time, before his class set out on that fateful trip to Jeju Island.

He and the other survivors of the disaster receiving treatment at the hospital occasionally talk about the accident that changed their lives, but they discuss details of what they experienced only reluctantly.

Joon-hyuk said that when the ferry began listing and taking on water, he was in a room with about 10 other passengers. Some of the students began to panic when the ship started to tilt and the water rose further.

Joon-hyuk and several other students hoisted a young girl upward through a door where rescuers were waiting. But unable to reach the opening themselves, they took their chances and dived into the depths inside the ship to try to find another way out. Joon-hyuk was eventually able to swim through a door and upward to safety.

...

Back in the hospital, Joon-hyuk, an aspiring historian, remains haunted by one particular memory of the tragedy.

When he was escaping, he was clutching the hands of a classmate. But somewhere along the way, their hands slipped apart and he lost her. He later learned that a diver searching the fourth deck of the ship found her body.

Joon-hyuk and other survivors of the accident aren't allowed to leave the hospital premises. But on Wednesday night, Joon-hyuk sneaked out of the hospital to attend the girl's funeral service.

Outwardly, Joon-hyuk appears composed. He didn't sustain any serious physical injuries, and he doesn't show visible signs of stress or fatigue.

But when asked what he thought of the tragedy and his classmates that perished at sea, a heavy silence enveloped him. After looking down for a few seconds, as if searching for words, he finally spoke.

"What can I say?" 

Quote

(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-9WNE9t5Y_5Y%2FU1iq9zgT3PI%2FAAAAAAAAtpk%2Fjd7HtMoLMt8%2Fs1600%2Fkhan_LJrdll_59_20140424135302.jpg&hash=11199a419d713918bcbd07e287765d77c273321e)

Article: [Exclusive] Discovered with their life vests tied together... two children who left the world together (http://'http://news.naver.com/main/ranking/read.nhn?mid=etc&sid1=111&rankingType=popular_day&oid=032&aid=0002469136&date=20140424&type=1&rankingSeq=1&rankingSectionId=102')

Source: Kyunghyang via Naver

Diver 'A' (58 years old) discovered the body of two students who had tied their life vests together. "How terrifying it must've been for the young students facing death. They must have tied their life vests together to face death with each other."

With 35 years of diving experience, it was his third dive that day when he discovered the bodies. "I was hoping that I'd be able to save at least one life."

He had managed to get in the hall for passengers when he discovered two pairs of shoes. Shoving aside everything in his way, he discovered the body of the male student, the first corpse he's discovered so far on his rescue mission. He closed his eyes and brought his hands together for a brief moment of respect before attempting to push the male student outside of the ship. Instead, he was met with something heavier. Upon inspection, he discovered something hooked to the bottom of the student's life vest. After pulling it up, the body of a female student was unveiled.

Because the two bodies were too heavy for him to pull out of the ferry alone, he had to disconnect the rope holding them together and carry them out one after the other.

"It was the most surprising and heart wrenching moment of my life. Normally, bodies will float in the waters, but these two children must not have wanted to be apart. It broke my heart and left me in a daze. I felt all of the strength leaving my body and had to leave the bodies behind to collect myself above waters. It was difficult for me to deal with what I had seen alone. I called my daughter and asked, 'Daughter, how are you? My heart is breaking.'"

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(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-RYxOqc_q-j8%2FU1iq97wJJOI%2FAAAAAAAAtps%2FEuVnPK_j_TM%2Fs1600%2F00502415601_20140423_59_20140423131504.JPG&hash=2f6d2a487b3f278ffb4d2a373f44ab7a0fa0761f)

Article: "I am a criminal... I motioned for my wife to go back in to the cabins when she tried to come out" (http://'http://news.naver.com/main/ranking/read.nhn?mid=etc&sid1=111&rankingType=popular_day&oid=028&aid=0002229386&date=20140423&type=1&rankingSeq=6&rankingSectionId=102')

Source: Hankyeore via Naver

The couple was celebrating their 30th anniversary on the ferry. "I was sitting on a sofa in front of the third floor cafeteria drinking coffee when the ferry suddenly started moving to one side. The sofa and the other children in the room were slammed into the wall."

He saw his wife try to come out to the lounge but motioned for her to go back in. "I heard an announcer tell everyone not to move from where they were and that it would be dangerous if we moved any further. I thought we could all live if we followed the directions. I didn't think that would be our last moment."

She is still missing. When asked if he has been eating, "How can I eat when people are watching? I am a criminal. What right do I have to eat when I am living without my wife?"

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Article: "I couldn't afford Nike shoes for my son, I'm scared I won't be able to find his body"... a mother who can't go into the gymnasium (http://'http://news.naver.com/main/ranking/read.nhn?mid=etc&sid1=111&rankingType=popular_day&oid=005&aid=0000649827&date=20140424&type=1&rankingSeq=6&rankingSectionId=102')

Source: Kukmin Ilbo via Naver

A journalist discovered a mother outside the gymnasium for families waiting to hear news about body discoveries. "I had a mother tell me that the bodies were described using the brand names that they were wearing... Adidas, Nike, Polo... 'I didn't have enough money to afford brands like that for my son. I'm scared that I won't be able to find my child." She didn't want to stay in the gymnasium because she wanted to be able to see each body as they arrived since she wouldn't be able to identify his body based on brands he's wearing.

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Article: Five year old girl 'Kwon'... mother discovered dead, father and brother still missing (http://'http://news.naver.com/main/ranking/read.nhn?mid=etc&sid1=111&rankingType=popular_day&oid=022&aid=0002660341&date=20140424&type=0&rankingSeq=7&rankingSectionId=102')

Source: Segye Ilbo via Naver

During the sinking, her older brother (by 1 year) put her in his life vest and shoved her to the top of the ferry with their mother. Their mother was discovered dead. The brother and father are still missing.

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Article: Body with a tight grip on cellphone discovered... deaths rise to 163 (http://'http://news.nate.com/view/20140424n12837')

Source: Newsis via Nate

1. [+1,264, -17] How much he must've been waiting for his phone to work... to be able to send a text or a katalk. To at least be able to give one last call to his parents...

2. [+932, -16] I wonder if he was looking at pictures of his family and friends until his last moment... So upsetting, there are no words to describe this ㅜㅜ How scared he must've been.

3. [+859, -13] He probably still had hope that he'd be saved... until his hope was locked under somewhere dark and cold.

4. [+54, -1] He might've left a final message on his phone, please try to recover as much as possible...

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(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-84b_JNIvmZU%2FU1iq96T5sLI%2FAAAAAAAAtp0%2FS0v4tr9gz7A%2Fs1600%2F2014042401071227089002_b.jpg&hash=921ba1f1c50c6969b20c3dcacf3b78e701b37bfa) (http://'http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-84b_JNIvmZU/U1iq96T5sLI/AAAAAAAAtp0/S0v4tr9gz7A/s1600/2014042401071227089002_b.jpg')

Article: <9 days of rescue> Diver "Broke out in tears trying to spread open the palm of a body gripped in a fist like a fetus" (http://'http://news.nate.com/view/20140424n13956')

Source: Munhwa Ilbo via Nate

1. [+264, -28] If the bodies were in fetal position to keep warm, that means the water didn't get in all the way right away. There must've been an air pocket and an area for them to stay alive in ㅠㅠ If the water had gotten in rapidly, they wouldn't have been able to worry about their body temperature since they'd be trying to swim to the top as fast as possible. People must've been waiting in an area without much water filled up trying to keep warm and wait for rescue.

2. [+171, -14] That picture makes me choke up every time. People waiting to be saved behind those glass windows... ㅠㅠ

3. [+120, -3] I can't find words anymore

Quote from: sbr on April 24, 2014, 08:25:37 PM
Let the Market decide.  If people want to shove kids onto an overloaded ferry with no emergency equipment and training it should be their god given right to do so.

QuoteFisherman Kim Hyun-ho finds no peace when he lies down at night. The hundreds of dead or missing passengers from the Sewol ferry disaster haunt his sleep.

Their screams ring in his head. He has vivid memories of his rush to save them in his modest fishing boat off South Korea's coast 10 days ago.

Kim thinks he may have pulled 25 people from the frigid waters of the Yellow Sea, he said Saturday. But the man from a nearby tiny island of just 100 people feels no pride, only torment.

"It was hell. Agonizing. There were a lot of people and not enough boats, people in the water yelling for help. The ferry was sinking fast," he said.

He watched people trapped inside go under with the vessel yards in front of him. Then he heard on television how many people were sealed up in the ship.

The father of two grown children is heartbroken for the hundreds of parents who have lost theirs, those he could not save.

He's trying to fish again, but he's a changed man, he says.

...

On Friday, investigators checked out the Sewol's sister ship, the Ohamana, and said they found 40 of its life rafts weren't working, emergency slides to help evacuate passengers were inoperable, and equipment to tie down cars and cargo either was nonexistent or didn't work very well.

Like the Sewol, the Ohamana had been modified to add more passengers, the prosecutor's office said.

Quote'Mom, This Looks Like the End of Me': Doomed Vessel's Last Minutes
Korean Ferry Students Captured Sinking on Video

By CHOE SANG-HUNAPRIL 30, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea — As a ferry carrying 476 people was badly listing off the southwestern coast of South Korea two weeks ago, one of the students on board asked, "Are we becoming a Titanic?"

"This is fun!" another shouted, not realizing that the ferry would soon capsize and sink.

In videos recovered from the cellphones of passengers aboard the ferry Sewol, a voice can be heard over the ship's intercom urging students and their teachers to stay put, telling them they are safer where they are. But as the ship continued to tip and the voice over the intercom repeated the same instructions, panic spread. Some passengers apparently sensed the approaching doom, and sent farewells to their families.

"This looks like the end," a boy shouted into a smartphone held by one of his classmates, Park Su-hyeon.

Before he could finish, another boy cut in: "Mom, Dad, I love you."

The young passengers were among 325 second-year high school students on board the 6,825-ton ferry, which sank on April 16. After Su-hyeon, 17, was found dead, the police returned the boy's recovered personal items to his family, who discovered the video on his phone. This week, his father, Park Jong-dae, released the video to the local news media, saying that South Koreans must watch it to learn what went wrong.

As of Wednesday, 210 people were confirmed dead, with 92 still missing. Of the dead or missing, 250 were students on a school trip to a resort island.

Among the text messages, photos and video clips that have been produced by passengers of the ill-fated ship, Su-hyeon's 15-minute footage bears the most dramatic witness to the panic and fear, as well as youthful naïveté and optimism, of the students trapped inside the ship while many of the crew members, including the captain, were among the first to desert their vessel.

"This is by far the most heartbreaking scene I have seen in my 27-year broadcasting career," said Choi Seung-ho, a veteran television producer, when he introduced the footage on Newstapa, a website run by the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism. JTBC, a cable channel, also broadcast a shorter version of the video.

The video was edited to blur the faces of the students, and the students whose voices were captured were not identified.

Su-hyeon's video begins at 8:52 a.m. on April 16. That was three minutes before the ferry sent its first distress signal to maritime traffic controllers on shore.

"The ship is leaning!" one passenger can be heard saying.

"Help me!" another said, sounding almost as if it were part of a youthful prank.

As students felt the ship shuddering and wondered whether it was sinking, a crew member came onto the intercom, urging students to stay put.

"Nonsense," one student shouted. Another said: "I want to get off. I mean it."

Though the vessel had tilted so much that some students were grabbing the railings on the wall to hang on, the video showed no sign of students trying to escape.

At 8:53, a voice on the intercom again advised the passengers not to move.

"What? Hurry! Save us!" a student shrieked. Another wondered, "Are we going to die?" A minute later, as the ship listed further, some students suggested donning life jackets. An announcement over the intercom again instructed passengers to stay where they were.

At 8:55, while the ship's crew sent its first distress signal, one student in the cabin below shouted, "We don't want to die!"

Over the intercom, the students were again urged not to move and to hold onto what they could. The ship's captain and crew members later told reporters and investigators that they had thought it was safer for the passengers to stay in their cabins than to move in a panicked mass, causing the ship to list faster, or for them to jump into cold waters when the rescue ships were still far away.

Some of the male students appeared to hide their growing fear with jokes and uneasy laughs. One student said, "We are going to make news with this." Another said, "This is going to be a lot of fun if we get it onto our Facebook."

At 8:57, as another announcement from the crew advised "please never move," one student said: "Should I call Mom? Mom, this looks like the end of me."

After a two-and-a-half-minute break, the video resumed at 9:00, when students began passing one another life jackets and one wanted to have a picture taken as a "souvenir." Some students complained that the zippers of their life jackets did not work and one student gave his life jacket to a classmate who could not find one.

"What about you?" the classmate asked.

"Don't worry," his friend responded. "I will get one for myself."

Amid the growing panic, one boy shouted that he did not want to die. "I still have lots of animation movies I haven't watched yet," he said. Another boy made a V sign with his fingers in front of the phone's camera.

At 9:03, one student wondered, "What is the captain doing?"

Three minutes later, students yelled "Silence! Silence!" as the ship's intercom crackled again, repeating the same message: Stay put and wear life jackets if possible.

"Yes, sir!" a few students responded in a hopeful tone. But another questioned the instruction: "What's going on? If they are telling us to wear life jackets, doesn't that mean that the ship is sinking?"

At 9:07, the voice over the intercom repeated the instruction.

At 9:08, a minute before the video ends, one student was heard saying, "I am scared," and others wondered whether their teacher was safe.

More than 20 minutes later, the first Coast Guard helicopters and ships arrived at the scene. Video from another student's phone shows female students cheering when they hear helicopters overhead. That four-minute video was taken beginning at 9:37 by Park Ye-seul, who died on the ferry, and was released to JTBC by her father.

One of Ye-seul's classmates could be heard pleading: "Save us, save us." But one of the first things the Coast Guard rescuers did was help the ship's captain, Lee Jun-seok, and other crew members off the sinking ferry.

Video footage released by the Coast Guard showed no officers trying to move below deck where the students were trapped. Investigators are reviewing the cellphone videos as part of their investigation.

Mr. Lee, the captain, was in his room and the least experienced of his four mates was in charge of its navigation when the vessel suddenly listed in waters notorious for rapid and unpredictable currents. Mr. Lee and 14 other crew members have been arrested on charges of abandoning their passengers in an emergency.

When he was deserting the ship, the 69-year-old captain was still in his underpants.

Quote from: Tamas on May 01, 2014, 05:47:47 AM
Heartbreaking  :(

I hope the entire crew gets very serious sentences. It looks as if people with no sense of responsibility get into officer jobs on ships worldwide. When that cruise ship ran aground at Italy, the captain there was first to leave as well. Scumbags. Hundreds of children are trapped in their ship and all they think about is running.

Quote from: Tamas on May 01, 2014, 05:47:47 AM
Heartbreaking  :(

I hope the entire crew gets very serious sentences. It looks as if people with no sense of responsibility get into officer jobs on ships worldwide. When that cruise ship ran aground at Italy, the captain there was first to leave as well. Scumbags. Hundreds of children are trapped in their ship and all they think about is running.

Quote from: The Brain on May 01, 2014, 04:26:21 AM
How are your kids dealing with this?

Quote
Passenger: "Oh, it's tilted. Hey, will you help me out?"

[One of the passengers makes a request by cellphone for rescue.]

Coast guard: "What is the name of the ship? Name of the ship?"

Student: "Sewol. Sewol."

Coast guard: "Sewol, is this a merchant ship? What is this?"

Student: "What?"

Coast guard: "What is the type of the ship? Is it a ferry? Is it a fishing ship?"

Student: "This is a ferry."

At this point in the video, the students talk among themselves. Their conversations are interrupted by on-board announcements.

ON-BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT: Please don't move from your current location, and be prepared for safety instructions [regarding the] accident.

"Will the water leak in really? The shaking is getting serious."

ON-BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT: Please stand by.

"It's tilting this way. Can't move."

ON-BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT: .... dangerous. Please be prepared for safety instructions [regarding the] accident.

"[Expletive] This is ridiculous."

"Oh I want to get off. I really do."

"Hey, would you like to shoot me [with your cellphone camera]?"

"Hey, what's the situation?"

"[Expletive] Hey, why did you get out?"

"Hey, hey, look at this. It's not going down any further is it?"

"Is it shifting even more? The shifting is getting serious. If I relax myself, I just move right this way [shows how the ship is leaning]."

"Lend me some support."

"Wait a second. Wait a second."

"Quiet. Quiet."

ON-BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT: ...do not move from your current position, please.

"Open the door."

"It can only be opened from the inside."

"It was really [expletive] difficult for me a second ago."

"This cannot be opened from the outside at all."

(Yelling) "What is this? Hurry, rescue us!"

"Yay, this is fun."

"Am I really going to die?"

"If we were outside the window, we'd already be dead, [expletive]."

"What are the chances of this happening, [expletive]?"

"Of course, even when I was living in [location deleted], nothing was even close to this."

"Hey, my arms are shaking."

"It's tilting even more."

"Hey, pass my shoes up."

"It's tilting even more? Are you kidding?"

"Hey, all the shoes are sliding away here."

"[Expletive] What are you doing?"
Looking for life vests

"This isn't an emergency situation. This is reality."

"Someone bring the life vests out."

"Come on, bring what out? Why?"

"Because we don't know how this is going to turn out. This is really happening."

ON-BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT: Once again, dear passengers, this is the guidance announcement. [Difficult to hear, possibly 'Don't move'] ... from where you are.

"We don't know what's going to happen, so bring them [the life vests] out."

"[Expletive] No, no, we can't go."

"[Expletive]-camera, camera. This is not recording well with this camera."

(Student yelling) "Let me live!"

"You never know, so keep this [life vest]."

"No, no, I'm fine, I'm fine."

[Another rescue call is made from Sewol to Jeju Vessel Traffic Services Centre]

Sewol: Our ship is in danger. The ship is rolled over now.

Jeju VTS: Yes, where is your ship?

"We don't want to die."

"Is the water even leaking in?"

"I couldn't even imagine it could roll over like this."

"We took our life vests."

"The ship is slowly tilting over."

"This is no joke."

"School class trip. [Lengthy expletives] school class trip."

"Here's a life vest."

"The ship is still settling. It's slowly going to the left."

"It feels like it's better than just moments ago. But why did the ship roll over suddenly?"

"Something smells strange."

"[Expletive.] Is the gas leaking?"

ON-BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT: Once again, dear passengers, a guidance announcement. Those of you who are inside the ship, please do not move. [Difficult to make out, possibly "Try to find"] ...a pole you can hold onto.

[Note: The view on the screen shows the interior of the ship tilted to one side.]

"Isn't this going to be in the news?"

"Hey, [friend's name], let's stay together."

"Something smells like boiled egg. Something smells like boiled egg."

"Settling. The [ship's] settling is finished."

"Hey, can you catch me if I fall?"

"Don't you fall."

"I really want to get down. It's scary here."

"I'd recommend that you don't get down."

"You hold on to this. You hold on to this, too."

"No, I'll hold onto this."

"Leave them on the floor."

"Why are you pulling out the life vests?"

"We don't want to die, don't want to die."

[Another phone call between a passenger and the police service is heard.]

Police: The ship is about to sink, you say?

Passenger: Yes. Yes. Sewol. Sewol. The one that's coming in from Incheon to Jeju. Hurry.

[indiscernible noise]

Passenger: We are not supposed to move.

Police: Hello?

Passenger: Yes. Yes. The ship is sinking.

"Even if you die, I don't want to die."

"[Expletive], is it over?"

"No, no."   

"It's rolling over. That's what's happening now."

"This one would be fun to post on Facebook."

"Dad, I don't want to die."

"Oh, this is going to be fun once the water leaks in."

"Really, once the water leaks in, we've really got to get out."

"Should I call my mom? Mom, I'm at my end."

ON-BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT: Please do not move from where you are.

"It says do not move."
'The Man Who Defied Gravity'

[Two minutes and 25 seconds later.]

"So, hey, they're all saying everything is going to be fine?"

"Sure. That's why I'm saying I got to get out of here now."

"Me, too. Me, too."

"Bye."

"Getting ready to jump in."

"I'm going to wear the life vest."

"I gotta wear one, too."

"Really gotta wear one."

"I must wear one, too."

"Hey, you should wear one, too."

"Are you going to wear it?"

"[Expletive.] Things like this should be photographed."

"Shoot this as the last souvenir. Shoot it like this. Call it The Man who Defied Gravity."
[Student poses in severely tilted cabin.]

"Shoot it [facing] down."

"Hurry, hurry, hurry."

"Mom, I love you. Mom, I love you. I love you."

"Some school class trip."

"Mom, the ship is now..."

"Don't fall on me when the ship suddenly shakes."

"Are we really all going to fall?"

"Wear clothes now."
[Reference to cold ocean water.]

"Now, we must try to live."

"Give me one of those [life vests]. Where is it? Pull down the life vest there."

"Here it is."

"Hey, hey, hey. Watch out here. The wind, kids, all....."

"Throw all the life vests down here."

(Yells) "Life vest!"

"[Expletive, expletive, expletive.]"

"Throw them."

"Got to survive."

"What is this?"

"Really, really scared."

"Time for a selfie."

"Me, too. Me, too. Take one of me screaming." [Makes a facial expression of screaming.]

"What is really going on?"
No more life vests

"Is it really sinking? What, they have life vests, too."

"Hey, you, wear the life vest."

"Ah, I'm hurt."

"Guys, put on the life vests."

"No more of them now? The life vests?"

"Yeah."

"[Name hidden] hey, what about you?"

"The [life vest] zippers aren't locking."

"My zippers are broken, too."

"We don't have one life vest here."

"Wear that kid-sized one. The kid-sized one."

"It seems like I'll have to."

"We don't have [name hidden]'s life vest. Must go and find it."

"[Name hidden]'s? Yours?"

"No."

"Go find them."

"Wear mine."

"What about you?"

"Me? I'm going to go get it."

"Go get it."

"I have lots of cartoons I haven't seen. I have lots of cartoons I haven't seen. The season isn't over yet."

"I hate sinking. I haven't even found my cash yet."

"Give me five more."
[Possible reference to life vests.]

"No more? Not even one? Look at that end. That end. Find another life vest."

"This is fun."

"Throw them all. Why are there no more [life vests]? There must be."

"Put your feet here."

"Are they wearing [life vests] outside [the cabin]?"

"The kids outside are not wearing them. They aren't wearing them."

"But the situation outside now, we can't tell the situation of the kids at the balcony."

"Bring it out. Bring it out."

"No, like, something got stuck."

"What do we do?"

"What is the captain doing?"

"It's like it became the Titanic. [Hums the soundtrack tune to The Titanic]"

"The phone is not working?"

"No, not working."
Final words

"Ahh, we're doomed. Like, I could die without having a chance to say my last words."

"Well, leave them now. [Expletive]"

"Record them."

"Recording. This is a video."

"Please, if I don't survive, Mom and Dad, I love you."

"Well, you next."

"He's reading the text messages. Poor thing."

"Hey [name hidden]."

"Don't shoot [video]."

"Mom, Dad, Dad, Dad, my younger brother, what should I do? I must say that my younger brother must not go on a school trip ever."

"Hey, you've got to give one to that guy, him."
[Possible reference to life vests.]

"I can't give them to those guys."

"Search in there. Search there."

"All done? Are you guys all done? Why aren't you wearing it [a life vest]? Well, you don't worry about gathering your belongings in a situation like this."

Teacher/adult: "Are you all wearing life vests? Confirm if you're all wearing one."

"Yes, ma'am, we're all wearing them."

"How do you lock this [vest]?"

"This doesn't fit."

"Ahh, I feel like I have motion sickness."

"Hurry, wear it."

"Look, come to think of it, I haven't done many bad things. [Expletive]"

"Hey, this is going to be in the news, I guarantee it. This is going to be in the news."

"No, it won't for something like this, unless it sinks."

"Sinks? It's sinking now."

"It will not sink. It must not."

"Ah, my cellphone. There's no network reception."

"Mom, I love you. Dad, I love you. I love you both. This is the son of Mr. [name hidden] speaking, because it seems like I might die here."

"Mom, Dad, I love you. [Younger sister's name hidden, repeated], please don't go on a school field trip, at least you must not if you don't want to end up like your older brother. Please let me live, let me live, let me live. This is the end. Can you see me tilted?

"Thanks. Really, though, what's happening to the kids who were on the deck?"

[A call between Sewol and Jindo Coastal VTS]

Coastal VTS: Sewol, Sewol, Jindo Coastal VTS. Sewol, Sewol, Jindo Coastal VTS. Sewol, is your ship sinking?

Sewol: Yes, it is. Tell the the coast guard to hurry, please.

"So, there's a high possibility they have fallen off [the balcony outside]. And earlier, from the deck, the deck doesn't have windows. So I'm saying it's more dangerous."

"What you are looking at right now...?"

ON-BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT: Students of Danwon High School and other passengers, this is a safety announcement. Do not move from the second floor, but please stand by.

"Right now, the ship is rolled over. I feel like vomiting. Now my legs are shaky. I'm feeling nauseous too. I'm in front of a guy calmly holding his cellphone."

ON-BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT: This is an information announcement once again. The passengers who are able to put on the  jackets, please put on the life jackets.

"I don't understand what's happening. Them telling us to wear the life vests, doesn't that mean the ship is sinking?"

"Ahh, we will have to jump into the sea."

"Ahh, this is a real emergency. [Expletive] - don't hold it."

"I'm not holding it, I'm not holding it. It's just touching."

"No, don't hold onto that. You might fall off trying to hold onto that."

"Hey, we're playing with smartphones in the midst of this situation."

"Audacious Koreans, we are."

"Hey [hidden name], look at our real, last audacity."

"Me, too. We're going to swim out to sea like this ...."

"Why are you holding it up?"

"I feel like vomiting now."

ON-BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT: Those of you who can reach the life jackets, please pass them around, pass them around. Make it possible for people to put them on, don't move from your current location, please stand by. Once again, this is the guidance announcement. Do not move from your current position.

"I wonder how [hidden name] is doing? [Hidden name] and who else? [Hidden name], [hidden name] and who else, too, is missing?"

"I thought we were on schedule. What is this? They said we were leaving at 12."

"It's hot, it's scary."

"You scared? Oh, the baby's crying. It's OK, it's OK."

"What, there's a baby? There's a baby. This is driving me crazy. This is a real emergency."

"Give us more life vests."

"I have to get this kind of telephone – those are hard to find."

"No more?"
[Reference to life vests.]

"No more, no more."

"Any more behind you, in the rear?"

"No more."

"Why is no one being sent to the women's room there?"

"I feel dizzy, I feel dizzy."

"Huh? Dizzy?"

"Where's the teacher?"

"I want to know, too."

"Is the teacher alright?"

"I received a text message from the teacher."

"What does it say?"

"'Are the kids OK?'"

"Ask the teacher what's happening."

"The teacher is not checking messages, for now."

"Ahh..."

This is the end of the recording. You can play the full video in Korean in the window below.

QuoteSeoul subway crash leaves scores injured

This was the first major incident involving public transportation in South Korea since the deadly ferry boat sinking last month.

By Hyung-Jin Kim, Associated Press / May 2, 2014

A subway train plowed into the back of another train at a station in South Korea's capital on Friday, injuring about 200 people, including about 150 who were hospitalized with bruises and other mostly minor injuries, officials said.

Local media reported there were long delays in providing instructions to passengers about what to do. That struck a nerve in South Korea, where the captain in an April 16 ferry sinking that killed hundreds of people has been condemned for waiting 30 minutes to issue an evacuation order as the ship sank.

A preliminary investigation suggested the train's automatic distance control system may have malfunctioned, subway officials said.

The driver of the moving train told officials that he applied the emergency brake after noticing a stop signal but wasn't able to halt in time, Seoul Metro official Jeong Su-young told a briefing.

Fire officer Kim Kyung-su said emergency officials arrived at the scene about two to three minutes after a passenger informed them of the accident.

Kim said about 200 people received relatively minor injuries except for two who suffered fractures and serious bruises. He said about 150 people remained hospitalized.

Several hospitals said none of their patients were seriously hurt. Hanyang University Medical Center said it treated 36 subway passengers for minor external injuries.

Lee Dong-hyun, a passenger on the incoming train, described a chaotic scene after the crash. "It stopped suddenly ... and everyone screamed," he said. Lee said the door leading to the next car was crushed and couldn't be opened.

The accident comes as South Koreans are criticizing the government for lax safety practices that many feel contributed to the sinking of the ferry Sewol, which left more than 300 people, mostly high school students, dead or missing.

The subway accident received extensive media coverage and was the top news on television and social media sites.

"I was so surprised and wasn't sure what to do," said Lim Seong-eun, 26, who commutes by subway every day.

Lim said her mother called her to tell her about the accident and ask if she was on the train.

"It's been less than one month since the Sewol disaster and I'm a little anxious that an accident like this happened in a place used by lots of people," Lim said.

Quote
   
The many masks of Yoo Byung-eun
By Aidan Foster-Carter

Who is Yoo Byung-eun? More to the point, where is Yoo Byung-eun? South Korea's most wanted man, known locally as the billionaire without a face, is nothing if not elusive. On May 20, South Korean prosecutors set up a 40-strong team to track him down after he had ignored a second summons to present himself at their offices in Incheon, the port city west of Seoul.

The same day, soon-to-be-ex prime minister Chung Hong-won told the National Assembly that "the government should try and confiscate all his fortune" - and for good measure his family's as well. Yoo's two sons and a daughter have ignored summonses, just like daddy.

Strong words, considering that Yoo has yet to be formally charged



with any offense - much less found guilty. But that's South Korean justice for you. The concept of innocent till proven guilty, or even sub judice - that's Latin for STFU, mass media, lest you prejudice any chance of a fair trial - is widely ignored. Day after day in real time, prosecutors shamelessly leak tasty morsels of what is so far only suspicion, to a press which then prints them as if they were fact.

Which indeed they may well turn out to be, once the mills of justice have done their work. It's not that I'm defending the guy or anything. But this is surely no way to run a judicial system.

Yonhap, the semi-official news agency, said on May 20 that Yoo faces "a host of corruption charges, including embezzlement, dereliction of duty, tax evasion and bribery, according to the prosecutors". One more reminder: he hasn't actually been indicted for any of this, yet.

But the net is closing in. So, who is Yoo Byung-eun? A man of many disguises and carefully honed identities, some currently being shed in hopes to thwart those trying to track him down.

First and foremost this means the South Korean government, which has swung into action big-time. A phalanx of authorities - police, prosecutors, tax authorities, financial regulators, customs, you name it - are hard on the trail of the man they believe to be ultimately behind Chonghaejin Marine. That's the company which owned and operated the 6,825 ton Sewol, Korea's largest ferry until it suddenly listed and sank on April 16. As you doubtless know all too well by now, more than 300 people drowned. Most were teenagers from a single year-group in a single school near Seoul, who were heading for an Easter break on the holiday island of Jeju.

More than a month later, this awful tragedy continues to grip the country. On May 19, a tearful President Park Geun-hye apologized, not for the first time. Many questions arise, but these are not directly our subject here. Mine is a simpler quest, or should be. Who is Yoo Byung-eun?

Covering his tracks
I too have been trying to track him down, online. This was easier a month ago than now. Even then, Yoo dissembled. Lately, someone has been trying very hard to hide or erase his tracks.

But they reckoned without Archive.org. In case you don't know it, this amazing site trawls the Web continuously, caching everything it can. You can't guarantee to find every web page that has ever existed, but there's a good chance. This has been a vital resource for Sherlock AFC.

So, who is Yoo? Oh but please, call him Ahae: he'd prefer that. (It means child in old Korean, which may be significant.) The most successful and least controversial of Yoo's many guises, Ahae is a nature photographer. He's best known for taking 2.7 million pictures, no less, from a single window: recording the changing seasons, passing birds and animals, and much more.

These are lovely images, no question. At Ahae.com on Archive.org for April 30 [1], you can see how this site used to open. It's one of the most beautiful things that I've ever watched on the Web. A similar half-hour slideshow, with new age music, is still there to enjoy at Ahae.com.

But better to watch it on YouTube. [2] For Ahae.com now opens as Ahaenews.com, and to reach the photos requires scrolling down past some tendentious talking heads. Curators et al from London, Paris - Ahae has exhibited at Versailles - Florence, Prague and Moscow have been wheeled out to sing his praises. Mike von Joel, described as Editor in Chief of State Media in London (new to me), deplores the "insidious calumnies currently being directed at the Korean photographer and artist we know in the UK as AHAE" (do we? Capitals in the original).

Professor Milan Knizak, former Director of the National Gallery in Prague, goes further. He declares that "Korea Should Be Proud of People like AHAE" (fat chance). All this is subtitled and printed in Korean, leaving no doubt of the intended target audience of this quixotic quest.

But who is Ahae? Even before the Sewol storm broke, he seemed self-effacing - literally. The only images of him on Ahae.com were shot from behind: cap on head, camera pressed to eye. I can find no pictures of him at all on the new, exculpatory Ahaenews.com. Nor is he named there in full, though we learn he is Yoo - and that one of his sons is known in Paris as Keith.

Many talents, he says
If this suggests modesty, think again. Before the Sewol sank, Ahae.com featured a long (2,000 word) "Introduction To Ahae And His Photography". This puffed a genius, again unnamed, of infinite talents: "inventor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, environmental activist, martial artist, painter, sculptor, poet, and photographer." (Spot the missing one? We'll come back to that.)

A clue: he clearly thinks he is God's gift. A Korean born in Japan in 1941, thus aged 73, he is a seventh degree black belt in Taekwondo, and has "registered and owned over one thousand patents and trademarks" in his business career. This includes health products and "the largest organic lavender farm in Southern California". As well as, ahem, "various boats and small ocean-going ships that now plough the waters of the Han River in Seoul and further afield".

For some reason he doesn't want you to see this now, but in vain: it's still up at Archive.org. [3] What he does want you to read is a press release issued on April 25. [4] Yoo waited nine days to express "profound sadness" at the ferry disaster, but once again his main focus is himself. He insists he had nothing to do with Chonghaejin, while admitting his sons are its shareholders.

A wiser man would have left it there - and said sorry sooner. Not Yoo. His press release then degenerates into a narcissistic, evasive whinge about an "undeserved attack against AHAE, his character and his credentials as an artist." Knizak's "Korea should be proud of people like AHAE" is trotted out again. The fact that Yoo had already been slapped with a travel ban is airily dismissed: "This blanket approach is standard for investigations by Korean regulators."

It gets worse. All this has "brought back painful memories from 1991 to Mr Yoo when he was the undeserved focus of a frenzied media circus, and then subsequently fully exonerated". He was found to have "no link" to "a major mass suicide scandal related to a religious cult".

"Fully exonerated" is an odd description of being jailed for four years, as Yoo was in 1992. And "no link"? That's iffy, too. More on this murky blast from the past in just a moment.

Denying God.com
For now, recall that as Ahae Yoo professed no fewer than nine identities: from inventor via entrepreneur to photographer. Yet he omitted a 10th and crucial string to his bow: Preacher. For this side of Yoo we must look elsewhere, though here too he'd suddenly rather you didn't. And where else to seek religion if not @ God.com? Amazing webname, no? Modest or what?

But actually, as of mid-May, a terrible let-down. Go there now, and all you find is a brief (100 words) home page with six bald questions: "Does God exist? Is the Bible really true? Why are there so many religions and which one is right?" etc etc. But no answers. No salvation here.

Didn't Jesus warn against hiding your light under a bushel? And all in vain, for once again the invaluable Archive.org reveals what Yoo now wants to conceal. As recently as April 30 the questions posed on God.com came with answers. [5] Four short devotional books could be read there, with titles such as The Anchor of the Soul and God So Loved (in three parts). [6]

When I first found God.com in April, it also had an "About the Author" page. This credited one B E Yoo, who "for more than forty years has worked as an inventor and businessman to support the spreading of the gospel all over the world ... He continues to work for the sake of the gospel ... with the same firm belief that this is a message that everyone needs to hear." [7]

Well, maybe not everyone. Or indeed anyone. First, the author page disappeared sometime in early May. By May 17, all trace of the books themselves, titles and text, had vanished too. A strange faith this, where saving souls suddenly seems less urgent than saving someone's skin.

But here again evasiveness is pointless. Yoo can hardly delete his life history. It's well-known that in 1962 he co-founded the Evangelical Baptist Church (EBC). Prosecutors were quick to raid EBC's HQ. For a time, Yoo was thought to be hiding in a church facility in Anseong, south of Seoul, protected by hundreds of EBC faithful. Their loyalty, however misplaced, when all of South Korea is baying for his blood, puts to shame Ahae's strange failure to mention this - surely his core identity if he's sincere. Shades of the disciple Peter's notorious denial of Jesus. Authorities on Wednesday, backed by 25 buses filled with riot police, gained access to the facility following a nine-day stand-off after prosecutors won court permission to enter the complex by force if necessary, but they found no sign of Yoo.

So where does the EBC fit in? And what was that nasty business back in the 1990s? The death toll was lower than the Sewol, but the circumstances far more sinister. A vivid blogpost from 2010 at the excellent Ask-a-Korean unravels a tangled and lurid history, suddenly relevant. [8]

A cult murder-suicide
The nasty part was a 1987 mass murder-suicide. Thirty-two bodies were found at a facility belonging to Odaeyang, a firm that fronted for a religious cult. Fingers were pointed at Yoo at the time. But as he insists, prosecutors could find nothing linking him to that shocking crime as such.

Yet he certainly figures in the wider picture. Odaeyang was a breakaway from the EBC, and reportedly the money trail (US$17 million at today's prices) led to Semo Ferries, owned by Yoo. In 1992, Yoo was jailed for fraud, guilty of siphoning off church funds into his business. Echoing this, prosecutors are now suggesting that EBC money flowed into Chonghaejin too.

And Semo? From 1986, its pleasure boats plied the Han river in Seoul, thanks to Yoo's ties with then dictator Chun Doo-hwan. Semo went bust in 1997. Unfazed, Yoo founded Chonghaejin in 1999 using Semo's assets. His empire overall is said to be worth at least 240 billion won (US$231 million); but one estimate doubles that, and local media call him a billionaire.

Church and business still seem to overlap. EBC's 20,000 followers reportedly include most top officials in Chonghaejin's 26-odd affiliates - this mini-chaebol (conglomerate) ranges from ferries and shipbuilding to paint and door-to-door selling - and most of the Sewol crew, who nearly all saved themselves while abandoning their young passengers. As a Korea Times headline starkly put it: "Infidel Sewol captain and sailors [are] devout Guwon faithfuls".

Gu-what? It means salvation. In the hothouse world of Korean sects, messiahs are many. But the Korea Times' lurid language - infidel, heathen, pagan - misleads. More precisely, South Korea's mainstream Protestants have condemned EBC and its ilk as heretical. The theology is abstruse, but if that grabs you then try this lengthy counterblast [9] - from Nagaland in eastern India, of all places. Korea is Asia's most Protestant nation; its missionaries get everywhere.

What next? The authorities are determined to nab Yoo. Sooner or later they will, perhaps even by the time you read this. Some suggest Yoo in fact slipped away from the Anseong facility and is now hiding out with supporters in Seoul. One son and daughter are overseas. All this could run and run.

Based on his behavior so far, the least likely outcome is that Yoo will do the decent thing and turn himself in. In the 1980s, he used to tell his flock to obey the law, even though that meant Chun's dictatorship. Today's democratically legitimate laws surely deserve no less respect.

We know how he hates a "frenzied media circus". In a rare interview in 1999 after his release from jail, he said he felt "really insulted" that people linked him to Odaeyang, adding: "I feel like I'm a woman living in a small village and one day you suddenly got sexually assaulted." (Hat-tip to Reuters, who early on did more research on Yoo than most media then or since.) [10]

Selfish salvation
This time may well be worse. Might Yoo seek martyrdom? He doesn't sound the type. Maybe theology is relevant here. The reasons EBC and its ilk (who are legion in Korea) are seen as heretical by the Protestant mainstream include their rejection of religious authority in favor of unmediated individual salvation. That carries risks. One is if believers are told all their sins are now forgiven and interpret this to mean that whatever they do is right. Or worse, if the leader of such a group gets the same idea into his head. You can see where that could lead.

Like I said, I don't prejudge. But if Yoo is a man of faith, let him come out now and face the music. And should he ever write a full and honest autobiography, I sure as hell want to read it.

Meanwhile, we have his beautiful tranquil nature shots. As different as could be from other images, unbearable even to imagine. Images of hundreds of children, their lives cruelly stolen, breaking their fingers desperately clawing at portholes as the chilly waters of the West Sea entombed them. Images of their young bodies, bloated and rotting now; a few still to be found and handed back to families who will grieve for as long as they live, and maybe then some.

The link is even closer than you think. One theory on why the Sewol sank, and so fast, is that it was overloaded: both with freight, and by having an possibly top-heavy extra story added in a refit in 2012 when Chonghaejin bought it from Japan (when it was already 18 years old and should have been scrapped). The extra floor was used to pack in more cabins - and also for a gallery displaying Ahae's pictures. I don't think I can bear to look at those any more.

QuoteKorean police: Body of key figure in deadly ferry case found
 

By Steve Almasy and Judy Kwon, CNN

July 22, 2014 -- Updated 0226 GMT (1026 HKT)

(CNN) -- DNA taken from a body found in June matches that of fugitive billionaire Yoo Byung-eun, police in South Korea said Tuesday.

Yoo went missing after a ferry sank in April, killing 292 people aboard, including hundreds of high school students.

Through an investment vehicle and subsidiary, Yoo, 73, and his two sons were believed to have controlled the shipping company that operated the ferry, according to the semi-official Yonhap news agency. In late April, Yoo's representatives sent a statement denying that he had any direct or indirect connection to Chonghaejin Marine Company.

Yoo was wanted for questioning in connection with an investigation into alleged funds embezzlement, tax evasion and other irregularities that prosecutors say could have contributed to the sinking on April 16.

The chief of police in Suncheon, Yoo Hyung-ho, told reporters that the body was 80% decomposed when an autopsy was started June 13, a day after the body was found. Yonhap said the body was found in a plum field in the city of Suncheon, about 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of Seoul.

He said authorities were able to match DNA from the body to the billionaire and also used a fingerprint from the right index finger.

The police chief added that a few empty alcohol bottles were also found with the body. The cause of the death remains under investigation.

Yoo was known as the "millionaire without a face" because of his reluctance to appear in public. Yoo had four sons and daughters; the whereabouts of three of the four are unknown.

QuoteSewol Experienced Brief Blackout Before Capsizing

New evidence suggests that a power blackout may have caused the ferry Sewol to capsize and sink off the southwest coast last Wednesday.

The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries on Monday analyzed the automatic identification system aboard the ferry and confirmed that it experienced a 36-second blackout just before it sank. The cause remains unknown.

A ministry official said, "We need to investigate to determine why the ship veered sharply to the right after the blackout."

The ferry's third mate, Park Han-gyeol (26), who was navigating the Sewol at the time of the accident, told police she asked the helmsman to steer the vessel only five degrees to the right. The helmsman told police he followed Park's instructions, but the ship veered far more sharply.

Park, who was among the first to be rescued while hundreds of passengers remained trapped on board, has been arrested.

Quote from: Jacob on May 26, 2014, 05:04:21 AM
My hotel overlooked Seoul city hall

Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 28, 2014, 03:00:18 AM

Quote from: Jacob on May 26, 2014, 05:04:21 AM
My hotel overlooked Seoul city hall

The Plaza?  Pretty souless, no?  Or the Chosun?  Much more character.

I grew up not too far from there, behind Duksoo Palace.

Quote from: Martinus on September 28, 2014, 02:21:40 AM
How did they go from "2 dead, 107 missing" to "302 dead"?  :hmm:

Quote from: Admiral Yi on September 28, 2014, 03:00:18 AM
The Plaza?  Pretty souless, no?  Or the Chosun?  Much more character.

I grew up not too far from there, behind Duksoo Palace.

Quote
South Korean president's vow to raise Sewol fails to appease angry relatives

Families of 304 people killed in ferry disaster boycott anniversary event to push for independent inquiry as prime minister is blocked from Ansan memorial site


Staff and agencies

Thursday 16 April 2015 09.50 BST  Last modified on Friday 17 April 2015 10.51 BST 

South Korea's president has vowed to raise the Sewol , bowing to a key demand from victims' relatives as they marked the first anniversary of the ferry disaster in which 304 people died – most of them schoolchildren.

"I will take the necessary steps to salvage the ship at the earliest possible date," Park Geun-hye said on Thursday during a brief visit to the southern island of Jindo – the closest landfall to the site where the vessel sank on 16 April 2014.

The announcement to raise the 6,825-tonne vessel – at an estimated cost of between £64m ($91m) and £92m – failed to appease victims' families, who boycotted an anniversary event to push their separate demand for a fully independent inquiry into the tragedy.

The depth of anger remains considerable a year after the passenger ferry sank.

While largely blamed on the ship's illegal redesign and overloading, the accident also exposed deeper-rooted problems of corruption, lax safety standards and regulatory failings in South Korea.

The overloaded ferry was carrying 476 people, including 325 students from the high school in Ansan, when it sank. Only 75 students survived. A total of 295 bodies were recovered from the ferry, but nine remained unaccounted for when divers finally called off the often treacherous search in November.

The end of the search came as the captain who abandoned the ferry as it capsized was sentenced to 36 years in prison for gross negligence. The head of the ferry operator was later jailed for 10 years.

Raising the Sewol could take up to 18 months.

f Ansan, a city south of Seoul where the majority of those who died were from, was the focus of Thursday's remembrance activities.

Flags flew at half mast and yellow ribbons fluttered from trees and lamp posts across the city, where sirens blared at 10:00am local time (and residents bowed their heads for a minute's silence and prayer.


Despite torrential rain, thousands of mourners passed through a memorial hall containing hundreds of black-ribboned, flower-ringed portraits of the dead students from Danwon high school.

Parents and other relatives sobbed and beat their chests as they left messages, stuffing animals and favoured snacks under the photos.

"My son, I hope you're happy up there. Mom misses you so much," one message read.

A giant screen showed a slideshow of family pictures below a large banner that read: "We're sorry. We love you. We won't forget."

Uniformed students from the school were among those who paid their respects.

A formal memorial event had been scheduled for the afternoon in Ansan, but the victims' families cancelled it, despite Park's agreement to salvage the ferry.

Yoo Kyung-geun, a spokesman for the families, said there was anger that the president had not given assurances regarding an independent inquiry, adding: "I'm afraid her words were just meaningless."

Public opinion has been largely supportive of the families, although some conservative groups say leftwing organisations have hijacked the cause in an effort to embarrass the government.

The families of those still missing had spearheaded the calls for the ferry to be raised.


"My heart still aches when I think of the nine people who are still under the cold water, and of their families," Park said in Jindo.

The president had intended to pay her respects at a special altar erected at the island's harbour, but angry relatives had put up a barrier to block her access.

The prime minister, Lee Wan-koo, was turned away at the entrance to the remembrance hall by victims' families.

There is widespread frustration among many South Koreans who see their government as having failed to improve safety standards and hold senior officials accountable for a disaster blamed in part on incompetence and corruption.

"Nothing has changed," the JoongAng daily said in an editorial on Thursday. Chosun Ilbo, which has the largest circulation, concluded that "the country remains unsafe".

Large crowds were expected to turn out later on Thursday for an evening candlelight vigil in central Seoul.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 15, 2019, 08:29:43 AM
Five years on this tragedy still lays heavy on the nation's conscience. I saw so many protests over the years I worked near government center.

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=267186

Quote from: alfred russel on April 15, 2019, 09:04:12 AM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 15, 2019, 08:29:43 AM
Five years on this tragedy still lays heavy on the nation's conscience. I saw so many protests over the years I worked near government center.

http://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=267186

What were they saying?