Korean ferry sinks, 304 Dead, mostly high school students

[CountDeMoney]

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.

Hot pants.
Jesus Christ.

[Caliga]

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?

[CountDeMoney]

You know Tim, it's not gay if you're drunk in another country.  Jurisdiction issues.

GET IT JURIS DICK TION ITS A JOKE SON

[jimmy olsen]

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?

I didn't know it was akin to poison when I bought it.

[jimmy olsen]

I've read so many heartbreaking stories this week.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27120853

Eun-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.

[jimmy olsen]

What a bunch of dicks

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2014/04/23/2014042301196.html

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."

[jimmy olsen]

Maybe this whole sinking was a mass sacrifice!

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/23/world/asia/south-korea-ship-sinking/

Jindo, 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.

[Monoriu]

I have discussed this incident with the wife.  If we ever hear an announcement in a ferry for us to stay put, we'll immediately grab life vests and head for the decks. 

[Josquius]

If this was a incident in the uk it would mean an end to all school trips for everyone for a while to come. Nothing involving a boat anyway. Aside from the incident itself Let's hope it doesn't similarly mess up the lives of unaffected Korean kids a little too

[jimmy olsen]

Most trips and many public events have been canceled out of respect.

Surprise, surprise
http://time.com/74967/south-korea-ferry-sewol-chonghaejin-investigation/

The 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.

[DGuller]

The crew evacuated just fine, so that was a small amount very well spent.

[sbr]

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.

[DGuller]

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.

I'm pretty sure people are going to vote with their feet because of this.  I don't think anyone will be taking that ferry again.

[jimmy olsen]

Sounds like they have all the kids under psychological evaluation

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20140424-718213.html

One 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?" 

[jimmy olsen]

 Some articles translated by a Korean on another forum.

Article: [Exclusive] Discovered with their life vests tied together... two children who left the world together

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.'"

-

Article: "I am a criminal... I motioned for my wife to go back in to the cabins when she tried to come out"

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?"

-

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

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.

-

Article: Five year old girl 'Kwon'... mother discovered dead, father and brother still missing

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.

-

Article: Body with a tight grip on cellphone discovered... deaths rise to 163

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...

-

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"

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