Ferry capsize: S. Korean President Park apologizes over incident

“I apologize to the people,” Park said at a cabinet meeting today, according to a pool report issued by the presidential Blue House. “I feel heavy-hearted after a lot of precious lives were lost due to this accident.”

Public anger over the sinking has been growing since footage emerged of crew members, including the captain, abandoning the Sewol ferry ahead of passengers as it sank in waters known for strong currents off the southwest coast of the Korean peninsula on April 16. Major newspapers have criticized the government’s handling of the rescue effort, while Prime Minister Chung Hong Won resigned as polls showed support for Park and the ruling party slipping.

“I regret the layers of wrongdoings and malpractices from the past that have been left intact,” Park said.

“I should have made more efforts to fix those evils. I will make sure to fix the problems and create a country where people can trust and live a safe life.”

All 15 crew members involved in navigating the Sewol have been arrested. Captain Lee Joon Seok, 68, who wasn’t on the bridge at the time of the incident, the third mate named Park, who was steering the vessel, and a helmsman Cho, who was with Park, face a life sentence on charges including homicide through abandonment and homicide through occupational negligence, prosecutors said yesterday.

Homicide through abandonment carries a prison term of three years or more and a life sentence is possible under Korean law.

Kim Han Shik, the chief executive officer of the ferry’s owner and operator Chonghaejin Marine Co., didn’t answer reporters’ questions as he entered prosecutors’ offices for questioning in Incheon today, physically supported by two aides.

Investigators have established that crew members called the company seven times as the ferry listed, and assessing whether the calls contributed to a delay in evacuating the ferry, prosecutor Ahn Sang Don told reporters in Mokpo today, where the main investigation team is based.

President Park has called the actions of the ferry’s crew in abandoning passengers on board “like murder.”

Altogether twelve Chonghaejin Marine officials are under investigation, prosecutor Ahn said yesterday.

Three employees at the Korea Shipping Association, one floor above Chonghaejin’s office in Incheon, are being questioned by prosecutors after they allegedly destroyed documents ahead of a raid, according to an association official who declined to give her name to a Bloomberg News reporter at the office today. The incident at the association, which oversees ferry operators, was earlier reported by Yonhap News.

Prosecutors have said they’re also probing whether the ferry turned too quickly or abnormally, and whether it was carrying too much cargo on its journey between Incheon and Jeju island. Justice Minister Hwang Kyo Ahn on Monday pledged an overhaul of shipping industry regulations.

Mokpo Coast Guard was raided on Monday to assess whether it took immediate action after it received a distress call from a student on the ferry that was transferred via emergency services, said Kim Jae In, a senior inspector at Korea Coast Guard’s West Regional Headquarters. The emergency service control center was also raided.

The coast guard is still looking at why only one of the 46 lifeboats on the Sewol was properly deployed and why others didn’t auto-inflate when they hit the water, Kim said.

“There are too many irregularities and malpractices in parts of society that have been with us for too long, and I hope those are corrected so that accidents like this will not happen again,” Prime Minister Chung said in a televised briefing to announce his resignation.

Victims’ relatives shouted and threw water bottles at Chung, who will remain in office until the government’s response has concluded, as he visited them at a gymnasium in Jindo, near the site of the ferry sinking, hours after the incident on April 16.

President Park’s approval rating slipped to 57 percent as of April 25, down from 71 percent on April 18, the day after she visited victims’ relatives near the site of the sinking, according to Seoul-based polling company Realmeter. Support for Park’s ruling New Frontier or Saenuri Party has also fallen, by 4.7 percentage points to 48.7 percent. The opposition’s approval rate rose to 28.1 percent from 26.9 percent.

South Korea holds metropolitan, provincial and municipal elections in June, including the capital Seoul.

“The government was running about in confusion after the accident, making families of the missing passengers more angry,” said an editorial today in the Dong-a Ilbo newspaper, one of the country’s major dailies. “A lack of preparation left each department scrambling -- the security ministry, marine ministry, navy and coast guard -- at the site of Sewol sinking.”

Park pledged on Tuesday to establish a new department under the prime minister’s office to handle disasters.

Across the country, spring festivals and concerts have been canceled in a period of national mourning over the incident, Korea’s worst maritime disaster since the ‘Namyoung’ ferry sank in 1970, killing 323.

A group of 339 students and teachers from Danwon High School in Ansan, near Seoul, were on the ferry as part of a four-day field trip to Jeju; 250 students are among the 302 dead and missing from the sunken vessel.

Almost 180,000 people have visited the memorial altar in Ansan to offer their condolences, the Gyeonggi provincial government said yesterday. Mourners receive a yellow ribbon that reads “one little movement will bring big miracles” from volunteers. Each visitor puts a white chrysanthemum in front of rows of photographs of the deceased.

President Park visited the altar earlier today.

“This neighborhood will never be the same again,” said the owner of a snack shop about 100 meters from the school that was popular with students, who identified herself only as Kim. “I just wish they recover the bodies as soon as possible. Finding all the children and returning them to their families is the only way to find a little bit of peace.”

Next door to Kim’s shop, a sign on a small dry cleaners reads “closed until tomorrow.” The owner is the mother of a missing student. She left on April 16 to go to Jindo, near the site of the sinking, thinking her son had been rescued and would be coming home the next day. She’s still there, Kim said.

Divers have been hampered by low visibility and strong currents as they search the submerged 6,825-ton, five-deck vessel. They’ve searched 38 of the 64 cabins in which passengers may have stayed, coast guard official Ko Myung Suk said in a televised briefing today.

The official death toll of 193 will probably rise to 302, as no survivors have been found since 174 of the 476 passengers and crew were rescued on the day of the sinking.

At the Jindo gymnasium last night, more than 100 victims’ relatives were lying or sitting on the floor with blankets while volunteers offer food and drinks outside. The walls along the entrance are covered with messages of hope for the return of the missing students.