Korean Ferry Verdict Stirs Bitter Memory of 1970 Tragedy

By Sam Kim  

In this handout image provided by the Republic of Korea Coast Guard, a passenger ferry... Read More

After his mother was killed in a 1970 ferry sinking in South Korea, Nah Jong Ryeol spent four decades documenting the disaster in hopes of preventing another tragedy. Then the Sewol sank in April killing 304 people.
For Nah, a 65-year-old retired government worker, the Sewol disaster and the trial of its crew have forced him to relive the loss of his mother on the Namyoung, the country’s worst maritime accident. Nah, a college student at the time, has spent his life trying to keep the memory of the Namyoung alive and build a seaside monument to its more than 320 victims.
“For 40 years people cared little about the Namyoung,” Nah said in an interview. “That’s how the Sewol came to happen. Families of the Namyoung victims are asking today, would the Sewol have happened if we had been allowed to speak freely, console the souls of the victims with a harbor monument and made the government educate the public well?”
Captain Lee Joon Seok, 69, was sentenced to 36 years for not
immediately ordering an evacuation of the Sewol and “neglecting to take measures to save the passengers,” Judge Lim Joung Youb of the Gwangju District Court said in delivering his verdict today.
Lee was acquitted of homicide charges, avoiding a possible death sentence sought by prosecutors. The Namyoung captain also avoided the death penalty and received a much more lenient sentence than the one handed down today. In that case, the captain received two and a half years, as the judge ruled he didn’t intend to commit homicide, a sentence that angered many of the families.

Photographer: Wonsuk Choi/AFP/Getty Images

Sewol ferry captain Lee Joon Seok, center, is escorted upon his arrival at the Gwangju... Read More

Never Forget

“Justice should be carried out as justice should be carried out -- fairly,” Nah said in a phone interview from Jeju, where the Sewol was headed when it sank and from where the Namyoung departed 44 years ago. “What really matters is that we don’t forget these tragedies. Had we remembered the lessons from the Namyoung sinking, the Sewol wouldn’t have gone down.”
In the Sewol case, the court was unlikely to hand down a death penalty because the case was one of negligence rather than homicide, Kang Wu Ye, a professor of law at the Korea Maritime and Ocean University in Busan, said by phone.
“It’s true an overwhelming number of people died in this case,” Kang said. “But the court has the duty to stand by the law no matter how atrocious a crime might seem.”

Grieving Families

The two sinkings are South Korea’s deadliest maritime disasters and have more in common than just the request for the death penalty. In both cases the ships were overloaded, contributing to their capsizing. After the Sewol disaster President Park Geun Hye faced the wrath of grieving families, while with the Namyoung, it was her father Park Chung Hee, who was in power.

Source: Yonhap News via Bloomberg

Rescue boats sail near Sewol, a 6,825-ton passenger ship owned by Chonghaejin Marine... Read More

The Sewol capsized off the southwest coast on April 16 and most of the victims were high school students on a class trip. Parents were initially told that all the children had survived, only to learn within hours that 250 students were missing.
In his final court statement on Oct. 27, prosecutor Park Jae Eok said Sewol captain Lee avoided issuing an evacuation order because he was concerned the passengers would hamper his escape.
Public anger over the Sewol disaster sent President Park’s approval rating tumbling to its lowest in more than a year and depressed consumer confidence and spending. Days after the sinking she called the actions of the crew “like murder.” In May, prosecutors charged Lee and three crew members with homicide.

Death Penalty

The captain’s court-appointed lawyer, Lee Kwang Jae, asked the judge for “mercy” on Oct. 27. The attorney said he didn’t know what punishment would alleviate people’s anger.
If the court had agreed to the death penalty, Park would have had to approve the execution, which would be the first in South Korea in 17 years. During the 2012 presidential campaign she opposed repealing the death penalty, saying its existence serves as a warning to those who “perpetrate atrocities unacceptable by any means.”
“Public opinion can always creep in in such high-profile cases,” Jan Wetzel, a senior policy adviser at Amnesty International in Hong Kong, said by phone. “Public opinion is not a good yardstick for the administration of justice. Public opinion quite often is, as we’ve seen in this case, rooted in present-day developments and emotions and individual grief.”
For the victims of the Namyoung, the trial is evoking painful memories that many are reluctant to talk about publicly, Nah said.
“Even now the families of the Namyoung victims are remaining silent because they are afraid people would accuse them of using the Sewol as a chance to speak about their own pain. There’s only one thing we want. We want people to remember the Namyoung and honor the victims.”