The captain of a sunken South Korean ferry was arrested today on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need, as investigators looked into whether his evacuation order came too late to save lives. Two crew members were also arrested, a prosecutor said.
The disaster three days ago left more than 270 people missing and at least 29 people dead.
As the last bit of the sunken ferry’s hull slipped Friday beneath the murky water off southern South Korea, there was a new victim: a vice principal of the high school whose students were among the passengers was found hanged in an apparent suicide.
The Sewol left the northwestern port of Incheon on Tuesday on an overnight journey to the holiday island of Jeju in the south with 476 people aboard, including 323 students from Danwon High School in Ansan. It capsized within hours of the crew making a distress call to the shore a little before 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Only its dark blue keel jutted out over the surface. But by Friday night, even that had disappeared, and rescuers set out two giant beige buoys to mark the ferry’s location. Navy divers attached underwater air bags to the 6,852-ton vessel to prevent it from sinking deeper, the Defense Ministry said.
The coast guard said divers were pumping air into the ship to try to sustain any survivors.
Strong currents and rain made it difficult to get inside the ferry. Divers worked in shifts to try to get into the vessel, where most of the passengers were believed to have been trapped when it sank, coast guard spokesman Kim Jae-in said.
Investigators said the accident came as the ship was making a turn, and prosecutor Park Jae-eok said they were looking at whether the third mate ordered a turn that was so sharp that it caused the vessel to list. It’s also not known whether the turn was voluntary or because of some external factor, said Nam Jae-heon, a spokesman for the Maritime Ministry.
An official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter was still under investigation, said the company that operated the ferry had added additional cabins after purchasing the Sewol in 2012, increasing its weight by 187 tons
Another angle investigators are probing the role of the captain, 68-year-old Lee Joon-seok. Lee faces five charges including negligence of duty and violation of maritime law, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Senior prosecutor Yang Jung-jin said Lee was not on the bridge when the ferry was passing through an area of clustered islands, contrary to a legal requirement. The captain also abandoned people in need of help and rescue, Yang said.
“The captain escaped before the passengers,” he said.
The two crew members — a 25-year-old woman and a 55-year-old helmsman — failed to reduce speed near the islands and executed the sharp turn, Yang said. They also did not carry out necessary measures to save lives, he said.
Another focus of the investigation is whether a quicker evacuation order by the captain could have saved lives. Passengers have said they were told to remain in place below deck, even as water rose inside the ferry, and did not hear an evacuation order.
Police said the vice principal who was found hanged from a tree on Jindo, an island near the scene of the sinking where survivors have been housed, had been rescued from the ferry.
Identified as Kang Min-kyu, he was the leader of the students traveling on a school excursion. In his suicide note, Kang said he felt guilty for surviving and wanted to take responsibility for what happened, according to police.
He asked that his body be cremated and the ashes scattered where the ferry went down.
With only 174 survivors from the 475 aboard and the chances of survival becoming slimmer by the hour, the sinking is shaping up to be one of South Korea’s worst disasters, made all the more heartbreaking by the likely loss of so many teenage students.
The country’s last major ferry disaster was in 1993, when 292 people were killed.
Three vessels with cranes are at the accident site to salvage the ferry. But they will not hoist the ship before getting approval from relatives of those still believed to be inside for concern that the operation could endanger any survivors, said a coast guard officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing department rules.
On Jindo, angry and distraught relatives watched the rescue attempts. Some held a Buddhist prayer ritual, crying and pleading for their relatives.
“I want to jump into the water with them,” said Park Geum-san, 59, the great-aunt of a missing student, Park Ye-ji. “My loved one is under the water and it’s raining. Anger is not enough.”
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