"Save Us! We're on a Ship and I Think It's Sinking!"

The April 16 disaster off the southern coast of South Korea has struck a devastating blow to the country. An advanced, technological economy capable of producing goods and services for its population, proud of its collaborative advance with Western countries, yet incapable of mounting a rescue mission to save the lives of hundreds of vulnerable youth trapped in a vessel in frigid, unforgiving waters.

The orange sun begins to set above searchers and divers looking for bodies of passengers believed trapped in the sunken ferry near Jindo, south of Seoul. Photo / AP.

 

There has been a slight comparison with the sinking of a ferry in the Inside Passage off British Columbia where the Queen of the North hit a rock and sank rapidly with two deaths as a result. The water in the area is cold and considered treacherous; it is an isolated area. The mariner navigating the vessel in 2006 when it ran aground and sank was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for criminal negligence after a routine turn was missed causing a collision with a remote island.

Although that ferry had a capacity of 700 passengers and 150 cars, there were, on that occasion, only 101 passengers on board. But they all survived under extremely adverse conditions, with the exception of the two passengers who vanished to their death. As in the April 16 South Korean disaster, the captain of the Queen of the North was not on the bridge at the time of the accident. Winds gusted to 75 km/hr. The ship sank in an hour and passengers were evacuated into lifeboats.




In contrast, the Sewol's captain, Lee Joon-seok's judgement was to instruct the hundreds of teens from a single high school to remain where they were, not to go up on deck where they might have been saved. Over three-quarters of the 323 students on board the ferry are dead or missing. Almost two-thirds of the remaining 153 people aboard survived the sinking. Corpses are being steadily recovered since the week-end with low visibility and strong currents lifted.

Transcripts between the ship and shore related the uncertainty of the crew and particularly that of the captain, as to the correct course of action to take. An astonishing state of affairs. Where there were insufficient numbers of life jackets to be distributed, and some crew members surrendered their own to passengers without them. And lifeboats were not launched and passengers evacuated into them. But if the hundreds of young people had been assembled on deck they might all be alive now.

One transcript revealed a ship, Doola Ace, had been three kilometres distant from the Sewol, a mere eleven minutes after the distress call came in from the bridge. The Doola Ace was instructed to assist in a rescue. Twelve minutes later the Doola Ace reported the ferry wasn't in the process of evacuating its passengers. "We cannot move alongside if people don't evacuate", said the Doola Ace.

In another five minutes it radioed back again to say it was "right in front" of the Sewol, and still waiting to see any passengers it could evacuate from the ship; no one appeared on the deck. When the shore informed the ship once again to get its passengers up on deck, the bridge came back with the word that the captain had not yet made his final decision.

Park Hye-son, 16, an aspiring television screenwriter. Now dead, along with hundreds of her high-school peers. Her mother described how occasionally she and her daughter exchanged harsh words. Her memory haunts her with the time her daughter yelled, "I just want to die", and Lim Son-mi responded to her daughter: "Then why don't you go and die?"

In this Monday, April 21, 2014 photo, Lim Son-mi, 50, who works at a daycare center in Ansan, speaks during an interview in Jindo, South Korea. Her daughter Park Hye-son is among the 302 people dead or missing in last week’s South Korean ferry disaster. She said her 16-year-old daughter Hye-son wanted to be a television screenwriter. But Lim’s wages from working at a daycare center meant she didn’t have enough money to send her younger daughter to the writing academy she’d wanted to attend.      AP Photo/Gillian Wong