The Sewol Ferry Disaster in Korea and Maritime
Safety Management

SUK KYOON KIM

Korea Coast Guard (Ret.)

Seoul, Korea

The sinking of the Sewol ferry on April 16, 2014, in Korea, the deadliest peacetime
maritime accident in decades, was caused by a variety of factors, including human
error and institutional and legal deficiencies. This article reviews the incident and its
consequences.

Keywords: maritime accidents, maritime safety, Sewol/ferry disaster

Introduction

The sinking of the Sewol ferry on April 16, 2014, was the deadliest peacetime maritime

accident in Korea since 1970.
1
In the aftermath the Korean government established an

agenda committed to advancing maritime safety standards, safety management gover-

nance, practices, and institutions, as well as enhancing public awareness of maritime

safety. Despite this commitment, challenges lie.

For Korea, which has a good safety record and a modern maritime safety infrastruc-

ture, the 2014 disaster was a shock that affected the country as a whole. Many critics

argued that the ferry accident was the outcome of a rapid economic development, referred

to as “compressed growth,” where the poverty-stricken country in the 1950s and 1960s

has risen to be one of the most developed countries in a few decades. They criticize that

Korea sacrificed safety for a rapid economic development.

This article explores what caused the ferry accident and identifies the lessons learned

from the disaster, and the challenges that exist to ensuring the maritime safety of passen-

ger ships to prevent a future such disaster.

The Sinking of the Sewol Ferry

Overview
2

On April 16 2014, the Sewol ferry, a 6,825 ton-roll-on roll-off passenger ship, with 476

passengers and crew on board, was en route to Jeju Island when it sank off the coast of

the Jindo Island. The passengers included 345 high school students on a field trip, 14

Received 9 June 2015; accepted 12 June 2015.
The opinions expressed are solely the author’s and are not intended to reflect the positions of

the Korea Coast Guard nor those of the Korean government.
Address correspondence to Suk Kyoon Kim, former Commissioner General, Korea Coast

Guard, Songdo Dong 3-8, Yeonsu Gu, Incheon, Korea 406-741. E-mail: sukkyoon2004@daum.net

345

Ocean Development & International Law, 46:345–358, 2015

Copyright � Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0090-8320 print / 1521-0642 online

DOI: 10.1080/00908320.2015.1089748

teachers, 104 general passengers, and 33 crew members. The accident resulted in 295

dead, 9 missing, and 172 rescued.

The ship departed from the Incheon Port around 21:00 p.m. on April 15, after

experiencing a two-hour delay due to a thick fog, which made visibility less than 1 km.

The ferry arrived at Maengol Channel, off Jindo Island, around 08:27 a.m. on April 16.

The weather conditions were wind speed of 4–7 m per sec, waves of 0.5 meters high, and

good visibility.

Passing through the Maengol Strait,
3
at 18 knots, the ferry, loaded with passengers

and 2142.7 tons of cargo, began to list sharply to the left (port) when it made a left turn

around 08:49 and capsized around 10:25 a.m.

Causes of the Disaster

The Korea Maritime Safety Tribunal (KMST) explored the causes of the sinking of the

Sewol ferry. The Prosecution Service
4
and the Board of Audit and Inspection conducted

investigations to determine the causes in the context of criminal prosecution and adminis-

trative charges.
5
The following are the findings of these agencies.

First, unseaworthiness, as a result of a modification of the ferry, overloading of cargo,

and drainage of required ballast water, were identified as the causes of the sinking. The

vessel, built and commissioned in Japan in 1994, was purchased by Chunghaejin Marine

Co. in 2012. Before the Sewol ferry was placed in service in Korea, the ferry’s upper

decks were renovated, adding scores of cabins capable of carrying an additional 114 pas-

sengers and an art gallery.
6

According to the findings of KMST, the modifications made the ship top-heavy,

moving the ferry’s center of buoyance 51 cm upward, made it more prone to capsiz-

ing.
7
When the Korea Register (KR), a nonprofit vessel classification agency respon-

sible for the inspection of the redesign of the ferry’s body,
8

approved the

modification, it set stability limits for the ferry respecting the maximum cargo

weight that it could carry and on the minimum amount of ballast water needed

when fully loaded. More specifically, the limits set after the modification were that

the maximum weight of cargo to be loaded was 987 tons, a reduction of 1,450 tons

from the original cargo capacity, and the amount of ballast needed was 1,703 tons,

an increase of 1,333 tons from the original design.
9

It was found that the Sewol ferry was loaded with 2,142 tons of cargo and 1,375.8

tons of ballast water.
10

The Prosecution Service accused the Company of deliberately

draining the ferry’s ballast water to load more cargo.
11

The Prosecution Service also discovered that the overloading of the Sewol ferry had

been a common practice and that the redesign of the ferry to carry more cargo and over-

loading were a way to address the worsening financial status of the Chunghaejin Marine

Co. The Prosecution Service indicated that the financial problems had been brought about

by constant embezzlement and fraud by the owner of the Sewol ferry company and his

family starting in 2005.
12

Second, poor lashing of the vehicles and badly tied-down containers were blamed for

the sharp tilting of the ferry. The poorly lashed and improperly secured 80 vehicles and

1,100 tons of shipping containers fell to one side and this led the ferry to tilt sharply by

30 degrees, which was irretrievable.
13

In this regard the Prosecution Service, citing the

results of a simulation conducted by a research team at Seoul National University, found

that if the cargo had been properly secured, the ferry would have tilted less than 10

degrees.
14

346 S. K. Kim

Third, the poor steering by the vessel navigators who made a sharp turn without con-

sidering the stability of the Sewol ferry was also problematic. The Prosecution Service

discovered that when passing through Maengol Channel, the spot of the sinking, the cap-

tain was not present on the bridge and neglected his duty to steer through the narrow,

risky waterway. Instead, the captain arranged for a 25-year-old third mate to make their

first navigation through the Channel from Incheon to the Jeju Island. The third mate and

the helmsman made a sharp right turn, ignoring a recommendation not to make sharp

turns due to the ferry’s instability.
15

According to the KMST Report, the captain and the third mate were aware of

the stability issues of the ferry as a result of the modifications. It was found that a

former captain of the ferry Sewol had advised crews not to make sudden turns

greater than 5 degrees.
16

The KSMT Report also found that the captain and crew were poorly trained for emer-

gency situations, which resulted in their fleeing the vessel when the ferry started to cap-

size without taking possible actions to protect the passengers.
17

When the ferry continued

to tilt, they repeatedly directed the passengers to “stay inside the ship.”
18

The captain and crew were all arrested and charged. The captain and three senior

crew members, including the first and second mates and a chief engineer, were charged

with murder through wilful negligence.
19

The prosecutors asked that the captain receive

the death penalty. The rest of the crew were charged with killing or injuring the passen-

gers by leaving them at risk.
20

In a trial on November 11, 2014, the captain was acquitted of murder. The judge

ruled that the prosecution had failed to prove the murder charge. Instead, the captain was

convicted of failing to take the steps required to save passengers in an emergency.
21

The

captain was sentenced to 36 years in prison for deserting the ship and its passengers in the

fatal crisis. The judge ruled that the captain “abandoned his passengers, knowing that

they were waiting for instructions from the crew and that if they were not evacuated, their

lives would be at risk.”
22

The others were found guilty of similar charges. The first and the second mates were

sentenced to 20 and 15 years in prison, respectively.
23

Eleven crew members of lower

rank were sentenced to 5–10 years in prison for shirking their duty to save passengers.
24

In a subsequent appeal on April 28, 2015, the captain was found guilty of murder.
25

Disaster Response

Concerning vessel traffic services in Korea, the Maritime Safety Act, the implemen-

tation of Chapter V, Safety of Navigation, of the International Convention for the

Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention,
26

direct that Vessel Traffic Services

(VTS) are to be provided in the Special Areas for Maritime Safety and heavy traffic

areas off the coasts.
27

The purposes of VTS are to provide information to prevent

marine accidents such as collision and grounding; to enhance the efficiency of port

management; and to provide advices, recommendations, and directions for maritime

safety.
28

At the time of the Sewol ferry disaster, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisher-

ies (MOF) had responsibility for the port VTS, while the Korean Coast Guard

(KCG) had responsibility for the coastal VTS.

The Jindo Coastal VTS, one of three coastal VTS centers and in charge of the waters

where the Sewol ferry sank, was monitoring the movement of the Sewol ferry on a volun-

tary reporting basis. When the Sewol ferry began to tilt, the crew first called for help, con-

tacting the Jeju Port VTS around 08:55 on April 16.
29

The distress call was relayed to the

The Sewol Ferry Disaster and Maritime Safety Management 347

Jindo VTS via the situation room of the Mokpo District Coast Guard, which is in charge

of these waters.

Contacting the Sewol ferry, the Jindo VTS kept advising the crew members to

“give directions for the passengers to put on life jackets” and to “determine quickly

the evacuation of passengers on the captain’s discretion.”
30

The Jindo VTS directed

vessels in the vicinity to “render assistance to rescue operations.”
31

When the crew

reported to the Jindo VTS that they were not able to confirm how much the ferry

was flooded and that the ferry had listed by 60 degrees to the left, they evacuated,

leaving passengers inside.
32

Thirteen Coast Guard officers at the Jindo VTS Center were convicted of negligence

and the forgery of communication records.
33

The Korea Coast Guard (KCG) is, in accordance with the Maritime Distress and Res-

cue Act, the lead agency responsible for search and rescue operations for marine distress

incidents. Depending on the scale of maritime distress, central, regional, and district res-

cue headquarters are established in accordance with the organizational structure of

KCG.
34
Their missions are to command, control, and coordinate rescue activities by agen-

cies involved from public and private sectors.

When the Sewol ferry accident was reported to the KCG headquarters, the

Central Rescue Coordination Headquarters was activated under the control of Com-

mandant of the KCG. The Regional and District Rescue Headquarters were also

activated. KCG rescue resources included the 122 Rescue Team, named after the

emergency maritime distress call 122. These teams exist in all 17 district coast

guard stations. Also activated was a Special Rescue Team at the South Sea

Regional Command, which specializes in deep sea rescue operations. The KCG

has four Maritime Commando Units in the Regional Commands, composed of res-

cue officers mostly from Navy Special Forces. They are primarily responsible for

maritime antiterrorism.

The above rescue forces were joined by the rescue forces from the Navy and civilian

rescuers. A Coast Guard vessel, the 100 ton ship, Ship 123, was on routine surveillance

duty 13.7 nm away from the accident and was dispatched to rescue the passengers on the

Sewol ferry. Three helicopters on duty in the vicinity also were dispatched to rescue the

passengers on the ferry.

The captain of Ship 123 was designated as the On-Scene Commander (OSC), in

charge of the rescue operation. In collaboration with fishing boats, they rescued 172 pas-

sengers mostly from the deck of the ferry.

The captain of Ship 123 testified at the National Assembly Inquiry that when the

vessel arrived on the scene, the Sewol ferry was tilting by 50 degrees.
35

The captain

of Ship 123 was charged with the botched rescue effort that wasted precious time

and delayed the evacuation of people from the vessel. The captain was found guilty

of professional negligence and sentenced to four years in prison. He was also

charged with falsely reporting that he had broadcast an evacuation order through

loudspeakers.
36

Passenger Ship Transport and Status of Maritime Accidents

Overview of Global Passenger Ship Accidents

Ferries are the safest form of transportation in North America and Europe. However, they

are often the agents of catastrophe in some developing countries. Over the past decades

348 S. K. Kim

there have been numerous incidents in which thousands have died. In the first few years of

the twenty-first century, there have been, on average, over 1,000 fatalities as a result of

ferry sinkings.
37

Table 1 shows the status of the most fatal accidents of passenger ships worldwide,

primarily ferries, since 2000. Most notable is that over the latest decade all the deadliest

incidents, involving hundreds to thousands of fatalities, have occurred in developing

countries in Southeast Asia and Africa. Among them, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and

Indonesia are ranked as the most vulnerable countries for ferry accidents in Asia. These

three countries are each composed of archipelagic islands or rivers where ferry transport

is a major mode of transport for much of the population. In Bangladesh, for example, a

nation of 130 million people living on a coastal river delta interspersed with 250 north-

south rivers, approximately 20,000 ferries provide two distinctive types of transport ser-

vice: river crossing and long-distance travel. The latter is more likely to be involved in a

catastrophic accident.
38

Between 2000 and 2004 more than 4,000 people globally, mostly from developing

countries, died in ferry accidents. As illustrated in Table 1, this trend appears to have con-

tinued despite endeavours to prevent ferry disasters and reduce fatalities.

When it comes to the causes of disastrous ferry accidents, the major contributing fac-

tors include the poor quality of the vessels, overcrowding, sudden hazardous weather, and

the human factor.
39

Most accidents are caused by the interaction of several contributing

factors, none of which would be fatal on their own. According to a report to the World

Ferry Safety Association, human error was a cause of most of the ferry accidents between

2000 and 2014 (up to 60%– 86%, depending on how human error is defined).
40

Of particular note is the stark contrast in the number of fatalities from ferry accidents

between underdeveloped countries and highly developed countries. The U.S. ferry sys-

tem, for example, which transports 200 million passengers annually, had virtually no

fatalities between 1904, the General Slocom Ferry incident,
41

and 2003, the Staten Island

Ferry incident.
42

The international community has, through the International Maritime Organization

(IMO), developed measures respecting the safety of large passenger ships, primarily

cruise ships and passenger ferries. This culminated in the adoption of a series of the

amendments of the SOLAS Convention in December 2006, which entered into force in

July 2010.
43

The guiding philosophy of the amendments was based on the dual premises

in the design of future passenger ships. One is that the regulatory framework should place

more emphasis on the prevention of a casualty from occurring. The other is that passenger

ships should be designed for improved survivability so that in the event of a casualty, per-

sons can stay on board as the ship proceeds to port.
44

The safety requirements of the SOLAS Convention do not apply to ferries that oper-

ate inland or solely on domestic routes.
45

The IMO has recognized the need to focus on

the ferries that do not come under the SOLAS Convention and is working on the develop-

ment of standards for non-Convention vessels. In January 2006 the IMO signed an MOU

with Interferry, a shipping association representing the ferry industry worldwide, to coop-

erate toward enhancing the safety of non-Convention ferries. The aim of the MOU was to

reduce fatalities by 90%, with Bangladesh selected as a pilot country to identify potential

ways to increase ferry safety.
46

Participants from both the government and private sector agreed to actions to provide

safer worldwide ferry operations through global cooperation
47

in October 2013 by adopt-

ing the Nanjing Plan at the second regional meeting on the operational safety of domestic

ferries held in Nanjing, China.
48

The agreed actions include inviting governments to

The Sewol Ferry Disaster and Maritime Safety Management 349

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350

develop appropriate regulations; reviewing and updating laws as well as keeping up with

technological advancements and new IMO instruments; promoting a safety culture among

stakeholders; ensuring that shipowners and operators develop and implement safety man-

agement systems; facilitating the provision of aids to navigation including Vessel Traffic

Services; and encouraging ship designers and builders to seek better technical solutions

for ferry construction, such as sink resistance and equipment to facilitate search and

rescue.

Passenger Ship Accidents in Korea

Maritime accidents in Korea can usefully be compared with those in Japan. Table 2

shows the number of marine accidents in both Korea and Japan in recent years. The statis-

tics indicate that, in Korea, there have been 10,155 marine accidents with 1,282 fatalities

from 2008 through 2014, averaging 1,455 marine accidents each year and 183 fatalities

annually. Passenger ship accidents, including accidents caused primarily by ferries,

account for 2.2% of the marine accidents nationwide. In Japan there have been 8,064

marine accidents during the same period, averaging 1,152 marine accidents annually, of

which passenger ship accidents account for 6.5%, with 75 accidents annually on average.

The number of fatalities between 2009 and 2012 totals 240 people, averaging 60 fatalities

annually.

Compared with Japan, Korea appears to be more prone to fatal maritime accidents,

with a higher number of accidents and a higher rate of fatalities. Concerning passenger

ship accidents, Korea has had fewer passenger ship accidents, with 228 accidents, as

opposed to 525 accidents in Japan in the same period. However, this does not necessarily

Table 2

Status of Marine Accidents in Korea and Japan

Korea Japan

Year

Number of Marine

Accident (passenger ship) Fatality (%)

Number of Marine

Accident

(passenger ship) Fatality (%)

2008 948 (21)
***

116 (12) 873 (59) N/A

2009 1,815 (17) 148 (8) 1,522 (62) 59(4)

2010 1,617 (22) 170 (11) 1,334 (79) 52(4)

2011 1,809 (22) 158 (9) 1,126 (68) 65(6)

2012 1,573 (33) 122 (8) 1,115 (99) 64(6)

2013 1,093 (39) 101 (9) 1,084 (103) N/A

2014 1,330 (74) 467 (35) 1,010 (55) N/A

Total 10,185 (228) 1,282 (13) 8,064 (525) 240 (5)
**

Source: Adapted from the Korea Maritime Safety Tribunal, and from the Japan Transport Safety
Board and the Statistic Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

Note: *The ratio of fatality per marine accident.
**The figures are counted with only the numbers of casualty available in the period between

2009 and 2012.
***The upsurge in marine accidents in 2009 in Korea and Japan alike is believed to be due to a

wider coverage of marine accident statistics, rather than a rapid increase in marine accidents.

The Sewol Ferry Disaster and Maritime Safety Management 351

indicate that Japan is more likely to have passenger vessel accidents, because Japan con-

sists of several thousand islands and has an extensive network of ferry routes connecting

each island. The disparity in the numbers of passengers carried by both domestic and

international passenger ships in the two countries supports the argument. In Japan, 87 mil-

lion people were carried by 2,272 passenger ships in 2010, as opposed to 17 million peo-

ple carried by 224 ships in Korea.

It is important to note that in terms of fatalities, the number of people dead or missing

in accidents in Korea is much higher than Japan between 2009 and 2012, averaging 150

and 60 people annually. This is also demonstrated in the statistics of fatalities per acci-

dent, for which Korea recorded 15 fatalities per accident in the last seven years, as

opposed to five for the four years between 2009 and 2012 in Japan. This can be explained

either by Korea being more prone to large-scale maritime incidents or that the responses

to accidents have not been as effective as in Japan.

Notably, the number of marine accidents in Korea in 2013 dropped significantly to

1,093, approximately 500 cases fewer than the average annual maritime accidents for pre-

vious years, which had recorded over 1,500 cases per year. This can be credited to “The

Project to Reduce Marine Accidents by 30%,” of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries

and the Korea Coast Guard. The Project has focused on the prevention of marine acci-

dents, of which fishing boats and small ships less than 100 tons accounted for approxi-

mately 66% and 71.1% of maritime accidents, respectively.
49

Governing the Safety of Passenger Ships in Korea

Licensing

The Shipping Act provides that the operators of passenger ships are to have a license,

varying with the types of shipping services, from the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.
50

The Chenghaejin Marine Co., in March 2013, had acquired from the Incheon Regional

Oceans and Fisheries Administration a license of domestic passenger liner service enti-

tling it to operate two ferries on a route between Incheon and Jeju.

Vessels purchased overseas are exempt from a newly built vessel inspection and

instead are subject to a special inspection carried out by the Korean Register (KR), in

accordance with Art. 60 of the Vessel Safety Act, which provides that vessel inspections

are outsourced to a public corporation.
51

The Sewol ferry, purchased in Japan in 2012,

was inspected by the KR in February 2013 before being placed in service in February

2013.

Safety Management System

As already noted, the safety requirements of the SOLAS Convention apply only to pas-

senger ships engaged in international voyages
52

with the safety standards of passenger

ships engaged in domestic voyages left to the governments in each country. Accordingly,

passenger ships are not subject to the safety management system to be adopted by states

pursuant to the International Safety Management Code (ISM Code), which obliges every

company to develop, implement, and maintain a safety management system that includes

safety requirements.
53

Korea has the Vessel Safety Act and the Maritime Safety Law; the latter implements

the requirements of the SOLAS Convention, including the ISM Code. Safety standards

for domestic passenger ships are regulated by the Shipping Act under which the task of

352 S. K. Kim

safety management had been outsourced to the Korea Shipping Association (KSA),
54

a

cooperative association of domestic shipping companies established in 1949 to promote

the shipping industry.

The shipping management regulations under the Shipping Act are quite similar to the

safety requirements in the Vessel Safety Act. However, they differ concerning the respon-

sibilities and authorities of a captain and a ship owner. The ISM Code places direct

responsibilities and authorities on a captain and a ship owner, but this is not the case

under the Shipping Act.

Under the supervision of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries and the Korea Coast

Guard, the KSA was responsible for the safe operations of passenger ships engaged on

domestic voyages. The responsibilities of the KSA inspectors cover a wide range of

checks for safe voyages, including adequate safety education for operators, the existence

of safety officers in passenger ships companies and safety reporting, weather, and ship’s

departure and arrival. Most importantly, the KSA was to monitor that passenger ships are

not overcrowded or overloaded.
55

It has long been argued that the KSA should not monitor safety because it is in a posi-

tion of a conflict of interest. In the aftermath of the Sewol ferry accident, the task of safety

checking passenger ships was transferred to the Korea Ship Safety Technology Authority,

a public corporation responsible for ship inspections and surveys.
56

Disaster Response

The Disaster Response Act provides the legal framework for responding to disasters natu-

ral or social in Korea. Under the Act, the Minister of the Ministry of Public Safety and

Security (MPSS), a newly created ministry in the aftermath of the Sewol ferry disaster, is

responsible for coordinating the tasks of disaster response and safety management by cen-

tral and local governments.

The Disaster Management Act states that when a large-scale disaster is declared, the

Central Disaster Response Headquarters (CDRH) is to be established within the MPSS

under the control of the Minister.
57

If a response to a large-scale disaster at the national

level is necessary, the Prime Minister will be in charge of the CDRH. A large-scale disas-

ter is defined as a disaster that inflicts enormous damages on life or property or that the

influence of a disaster is socially or economically far-reaching.
58

The Minister of MPSS

is responsible for coordinating response and recovery operations for a large-scale disaster

by all the agencies concerned. The Minister is also authorized to ask for financial meas-

ures and administrative supports of the agencies concerned.

Operational Maritime Safety

The management of maritime traffic, such as maintenance of waterways, aids to naviga-

tion, and vessel traffic management, is provided primarily by the Ministry of Oceans and

Fisheries. This differs from countries like the United States and Japan, in which these

services are carried out mostly by their coast guards. It has been a long-held position by

the Korea Coast Guard (

The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 12 | Issue 40 | Number 1 | Oct 02, 2014

1

The Failure of the South Korean National Security State: The
Sewol Tragedy in the Age of Neoliberalism 韓国国防国家体制の
破綻　セウォル号の悲劇、新自由主義時代の産物

JJ Suh

The Sewol ferry carrying 476 passengers
including a group of high school students on a
field trip to Jeju Island capsized on April 16,
2014, and sank to the bottom of the sea off
Korea’s southern coast. Most of the crew,
including the captain, were rescued by the
Korean coast guard. Some of the passengers,
who happened to be on the deck or escaped
soon after the capsizing, were saved by fishing
boats and commercial vessels that came before
the ROK Coast Guard or Navy. 304 passengers,
however, were trapped inside and drowned.

On September 21, Japan’s Fuji TV broadcast a
program that reconstructed a heart-wrenching
tragedy of the Sewol’s sinking on the basis of
survivors’ testimonies and footage from recovered
cell phones. One of the survivors states “I hope the
coverage [by the Japanese media] helps shed light
on why this happened and who was at fault,”
alluding to the lack of adequate coverage by the
Korean media.

The ship’s sinking may seem an unfortunate
accident, the operation to save the passengers
a heroic drama enacted in seas, and the
passengers’ death its tragic ending. Once the
surface is scratched, however, a complicated
picture emerges. The Sewol sank under the
weight of the neoliberal state that diminished
its role in safety regulation and oversight. The
rescue operation was weighed down by an
i r r e s p o n s i b l e s t a t e t h a t r e l e g a t e d i t s
responsibility to a private salvage firm. When
questions arose about the state’s responsibility,
however, it was not shy about mobilizing its
resources to evade and deny responsibility. The
whole tragedy serves as a reminder of how
neoliberal deregulation and privatization puts
people’s safety and life at risk through

processes of state collusion with business
interests and how a powerful national security
state may fail to protect its own people from
internal dangers it helps create.

The Sewol Sinks under the Weight of the
Diminishing State

The ROK Coast Guard concluded on April 17
that an “unreasonably sudden turn” to
starboard, made between 8:48 and 8:49AM,
was the cause of the capsizing. The Automatic
Identification System (AIS) data, that kept the
ship’s trajectory until its sinking, seems to
confirm the sudden turn. But this raises two
other questions.

First, why did the third mate at the helm have
to make a turn so sudden and steep as to
capsize the ship? At the trial on June 10, the
third mate testified that she instructed the
quartermaster to turn the ship by five degrees
in order to avoid colliding with “a ship” that
was approaching. She testified in court that a
ship “emerged” from the opposite side and “she
was watching the radar and the front while
listening to the radio in order to avoid a
collision.” Her testimony is corroborated by a
video recording by a commercial ship that was
passing by the Sewol at the time of the
accident: it shows an object moving towards
the Sewol. Also, AIS data restored from the
Mokpo AIS Station – the Sewol’s own AIS was
turned off at 8:48 AM for an unknown reason –
shows a trail left by an independent moving
object.

Quartermaster Cho stated in a TV interview on

APJ | JF 12 | 40 | 1

2

April 19 that he turned the helm as ordered by
the third mate, but when he did, the ship
turned more than usual. When the surviving
passengers told reporters that they felt a shock
in the front side of the ship, their remark
initially prompted speculation that the ship
might have hit a reef or rock under water. But
when the complete trajectory of the Sewol was
released after a long delay, it suggested
something different. It showed the ferry not
only turned by the five degrees ordered by the
third mate, but gradually changed course
almost 180 degrees as if it had been pushed by
an object traveling with great momentum in the
opposite direction.

What caused the Sewol crew to make a sudden
turn remains unexplained. What forced the ship
to change course and move in the opposite
direction from its previous course likewise
remains a mystery.

Second, why did the Sewol capsize when it
changed course? Investigations revealed that
the ship had been modified to accommodate
more passengers than would be safe. Added to
the overcrowding was cargo overloading. The
ship’s operators loaded twice as much as
regulations would allow, and apparently did not
secure the cargo as per safety guidelines. To
accommodate the overweight, the crew
removed water from the ballast, creating a
perfect condition for capsizing. The ferry had
too heavy cargoes that moved around and too
many passengers who were told to stay put
while too little water remained in the ballast to
stabilize the ship.

This raises a host of questions. Why was the
Chonghaejin Marine Co., Ltd., the Sewol’s
owner, allowed to add more floors than the
safety law allowed? How could the operators
overload the ship without being caught? How
could they remove ballast water to the ship’s
peril? Why were none of these violations caught
or stopped before the Sewol set sail? These
questions lead one to the shadowy relationship

between shippers, the shipping industry
organization and the regulators – haefia, a
Korean syllogism that concatenates hae
meaning sea with “fia” from Mafia, “sea Mafia.”
It is an iron triangle of the sea that thrives in
the age of neoliberalism.

The Sewol had been built and operated in Japan
for almost 18 years without any accidents until
2 0 1 2 w h e n i t w a s r e t i r e d a n d s o l d t o
Chonghaejin Marine Co., Ltd. that had a
monopoly on the lucrative Inchon-Jeju line. The
Korean owner bought the ferry which had been
retired in Japan after the Lee Myung-Bak
administration extended passenger ships’ life
from 20 to 30 years by changing the relevant
law, thus allowing the Sewol another ten years
of life in Korea. The neoliberal administration
that vigorously pursued deregulation justified
the extension on the ground that it would help
the Korean shipping industry save $20 million
per year in operating costs and become
profitable. It thus unambiguously placed
Industry profit before safety and life.

If the Ministry of Land and Sea Management
took active steps to deregulate, another wing of
the government provided Chonghaejin with the
cash needed for it to take advantage of the
deregulation. Chonghaejin itself had been
established by absorbing Semo Marine
Transportation after 200 billion Won (roughly
$200 million) of its debt was forgiven. The
Korea Development Bank, a wholly state-owned
bank that finances major industrial projects,
then loaned $10 million, an amount that almost
matched the $12 million that Chonghaejin paid
for the Sewol. Taking advantage of the
deregulation and the government’s generosity,
Chonghaejin added two floors in order to
maximize the number of passengers it could
accommodate. It also expanded the Sewol’s
cargo space.

There was still one more obstacle to overcome
before Chonghaejin could turn the deregulation
and the policy loan into a real profit. It had to

APJ | JF 12 | 40 | 1

3

pass the safety inspection before it could
launch the Sewol, and it passed the inspection
without difficulty. While the additions
undermined the ship’s stability by adding more
weight at the top and thus endangered
passengers’ safety, the modification was
inspected and approved by inspectors from the
Korean Register of Shipping (KRS), a private
entity that is responsible for the inspection and
registration of ships. Also when it inspected
over 200 safety features of the Sewol in
February, it approved all with a “satisfactory”
rating. Prosecutors, investigating the process
of inspection and approval, have discovered
that government oversight of the KRS that
performs the safety inspection on behalf of the
government has been lax. A cause might lie in
the fact that government regulators frequently
find employment at the KRS after retirement.

Chonghaejin’s greed did not stop there. It took
advantage of a loophole in the government’s
safety regulations to routinely overload the
Sewol. In Korea’s coastal shipping industry,
shippers’ safety practices are monitored and
inspected by the Korea Shipping Association,
an industry organization that represents the
interests of about 2,000 members engaged in
coastal shipping. In a flagrant case of self-
regulation, its headquarters is responsible for
“safety guidance” and “implementation of
safety measures” while its branch offices are
tasked with offering “guidance for passenger
ferry’s safe operation” and inspecting the
number of passengers and the amount of cargo
aboard a ship. The Marine Transportation Law
creates the position of the vessel safety
operators to guide and oversee the shipping
businesses’ safety practices, but the safety
operators are employed by the industry
organization although their expenses are
subsidized by the government. Passenger
safety is thus entrusted to the shipping
b u s i n e s s w h o s e p r i o r i t y p r o b a b l y l i e s
elsewhere.

It took the tragedy of the Sewol for everyone to

see that the industry’s self-regulation was a
formula for accident. Before the Sewol set sail
on April 15th, its operators loaded it with 180
vehicles and 1,157 tons of cargo, but grossly
under-reported that it had only 150 vehicles
and 657 tons of cargo. To evade inspectors’
eyes, they removed water from the ballast so
that the ship would float above the safety line.
The overloading in combination with the ballast
emptying made the ship prone to capsizing.
The Sewol’s regular captain, who had been
replaced with a temporary hire for the voyage,
testified in court that these were common
practices and when he raised the issue with
Chongaejin officials, he was told that if he were
to raise his voice, he should “resign” from his
post. The ship’s overloading and false report
were exposed only after the Sewol sank, and it
was on June 3rd that the Gwangju District
Court issued an arrest warrant for a senior
vessel safety operator of the Korea Shipping
Association’s Incheon unit for negligence.

The collusion between the state and the
Sewol’s owner risked not only the passengers’
safety and life but also the crew’s. Most of the
Sewol’s crew consisted of temporary contract
workers, a common practice among Korea’s
domestic maritime transporters. Lee Junsok,
the Sewol’s captain, for example, was a 69 year
old temporary hire contracted with a monthly
salary of $2,700 a little before the Sewol’s
departure. More than half of the crew,
including the captain during the fatal voyage,
were temporary workers with contracts of 6
months to a year. They were not only denied
fringe benefits, but they were also without
adequate safety training. As if hiring temporary
workers was not enough to trade passengers’
safety for profits, Chonghaejin minimized its
spending on crew training. It allocated a paltry
$540 for the crew’s safety education in 2013
whereas it spent $10,000 on “entertainment”
and $230,000 on PR, clearly showing its
priorities. And yet it is this crew that is
currently standing trial for the death of the
passengers.

APJ | JF 12 | 40 | 1

4

Most of the Sewol’s crew, including the captain at the
time of the accident, were temporary workers with
contracts of less than a year. While Chonghaejin
spent $540 for the crew’s safety education in 2013, it
is this crew that is currently standing trial for the
death of the passengers.

The Sewol sank under the weight of the
collusion between the neoliberal state that
sheds its responsibility to safeguard people’s
lives to private entities and the private entity
that trades customers’ safety for profits. The
accident serves as a vivid reminder of what
t r a g i c c o n s e q u e n c e s c a n r e s u l t f r o m
government-business collusion. While collusion
had existed under previous authoritarian
regimes that sometimes sacrificed people’s
safety for profits, the Sewol incident reveals
that the nature of the collusion shifted to give
m o r e p o w e r t o b u s i n e s s i n t e r e s t s . T h e
authoritarian developmental state shed some of
its power as part of the IMF-imposed structural
adjustment after the 1997 financial crisis. As
the government transferred some of its power
to plan, manage, and oversee the economy to
private entities, its relative power gradually
declined. By the time of the Sewol disaster, the
government took a hands-off approach to
overseeing such “private” entities as the KRS.
Privatized entities with increasing boldness
ignored government directives and warning,
and became more independent and aggressive
in pushing their agenda.

Rescue Failures of the Disappearing State

One of the greatest mysteries surrounding the
Sewol incident is that neither the crew nor the
government, including the coast guard and the
navy, made serious efforts to rescue the
passengers trapped inside the sinking ferry.
Thirty five passengers were picked up from the
deck and airlifted by three coast guard
helicopters. Most of the crew, including the
captain, was rescued by the coast guard’s
patrol boat 123 that pulled up to the control
room of the Sewol so they could jump to safety.
The patrol boat returned later to rescue
additional passengers. Most of the surviving
passengers were saved because they jumped
off the ship before it submerged and were
pulled out of the water by fishing boats that
happened to be nearby. Other than these, no
one was rescued from the sinking ship by the
coast guard or the navy after about 10:25.

The next several hours, the “golden time” in
which the passengers could have been saved,
was notable for the absence of active rescue
operations. The Navy’s Ship Salvage Unit (SSU)
and Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT) as
well as the Coast Guard’s special units were
dispatched, but arrived late and did not engage
in active rescue operations. Their failure was
compounded by deadly instructions by the crew
which repeatedly broadcast instructions to the
passengers to stay put and not leave the
sinking ship, contrary to common sense. In
another illogical instruction, they told the
passengers to wear life jackets first and stay
within their cabin. The instruction proved
d e a d l y w h e n t h e s h i p c a p s i z e d a n d t h e
passengers were trapped underwater, for,
wearing a personal floating device, they could
not swim underwater to escape from their
cabins. A majority of the passengers, high
school students, followed the crew’s direction
to their detriment. Meanwhile, the crew,
including the captain, was among the first to
abandon the ship, leaving behind over 300
passengers waiting in their cabins as they were
told.

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5

The crew’s failure was compounded by the
coast guard. The coast guard dispatched patrol
boat 123 to the Sewol, and although some
members of the coast guard boarded the Sewol
before it sank, they made no effort to rescue
the remaining passengers or even to tell them
to abandon the ship. They limited themselves to
rescuing the Sewol’s crew. The captain of
patrol boat 123 testified in court on August 13
that he “panicked so much that he forgot” to
instruct his crew to move into the Sewol’s
cabins, adding that he was “so busy that he
could not tell the passengers to evacuate the
ship.” Commissioner of the Coast Guard, Kim
S o k – K y u n , d i d n o t d o m u c h b e t t e r . H e
instructed, via the West Sea Coast Guard Task
Force, patrol boat 123 to send its crew to the
Sewol and “calm the passengers to prevent
them from panicking.” What is clear is that no
order was issued from the top of the coast
guard hierarchy to rescue the passengers
before the ship sank. Video footage of the
Sewol during the golden time shows coast
guard boats circling around the slowly
submerging ferry, effectively keeping away the
fishing boats that had come to help save the
passengers.

Newstapa, a trailblazer of Korea’s investigative
journalism, aired a program that exposed the
absence of the state during the “golden hours.”

It was not just the fishing boats that were kept
away. The navy could not enter the scene of the
accident to participate in the rescue operation
for the first two days. In the meantime, Undine
Marine Industries, an ocean engineering firm
that specialized in offshore construction and
marine salvage but that had no record of, or
professional employees trained for, passenger
r e s c u e , e m e r g e d a s t h e c e n t r a l r e s c u e
operator. The day after the accident, Undine
w a s c o n t r a c t e d b y C h o n g h a e j i n a t t h e
recommendation of the Coast Guard, and took
control of the rescue operations, sidelining
rescuers from the coast guard and the navy.
The problem is that it acted as if it was more
interested in salvaging the ship than saving the

passengers’ lives. Indeed, its divers saved not a
single passenger. Even when all the passengers
remaining in the ship were presumed dead, it
delayed retrieving the bodies of the dead for as
long as 20 hours. The void left by the state was
filled by a private company that may have
sought to maximize its profits by extending its
operations as long as possible.

T h e s t a t e a s a n o r g a n i z a t i o n w h o s e
fundamental mission is to protect the people’s
lives and provide for their safety failed
throughout the crisis. Not only did it fail to
establish an effective control center that would
mobilize national resources necessary for
rescue operations, but it added to the chaos of
the accident by creating obstacles to the rescue
and spreading faulty information. Various units
of the government created a total of ten
headquarters in response to the Sewol’s
sinking, creating confusion as to the line of
c o m m a n d a n d p r o d u c i n g p r o b l e m s i n
communication among government units.
M i n i s t r i e s o f S e c u r i t y a n d P u b l i c
Administration, Oceans and Fisheries, and
Education, administration, set up their
respective headquarters while the Coast Guard
and Kyongki Provincial Government also
created theirs. During the critical initial hours,
not only was the central coordination of rescue
operations lacking but no credible information
was available. Different entities reported
different numbers of rescued passengers, and
in what proved a fatal mistake, the Central
D i s a s t e r M a n a g e m e n t H e a d q u a r t e r s
announced that 368 passengers were rescued
at 1:19PM, 4 hours after the ferry’s sinking,
when in fact over 300 of them were missing. It
was only the day after the accident that all the
involved government units agreed to establish
the Pan-Government Accident Response
H e a d q u a r t e r s t h a t u n i f i e d t h e r e s c u e
operations and communication. By then, the
“golden time” was over, and the remaining
passengers were presumably dead.

The irony of ironies is that the potent power of

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6

the military deployed to save civilians was
stopped by the weaker coast guard to create
room for a private salvage company to operate.
The Tongyoung, the state-of-the-art salvage
ship recently acquired by the navy, was
ordered by Hwang Ki-Chol, Naval Chief of
Operations, twice to sail to the scene of the
accident and help the rescue operation, but it
never left its port. Representative Kim Kwang-
J i n s u g g e s t e d t h a t “ i t w a s d i f f i c u l t t o
understand why the Tongyoung was not
dispatched even if the naval chief of operations
twice ordered emergency assistance.” Kim Min-
S o k , t h e M i n i s t r y o f N a t i o n a l D e f e n s e
spokesperson, responded that it could not
participate in the rescue operation because one
of its critical components, a rescue submarine
that was needed to retrieve passengers from
the sunken Sewol, had not been sufficiently
tested or certified for operation. Why then did
the top naval commander make an uninformed
order that the uncertified ship participate in
t h e r e s c u e ? W h o m a d e t h e d e c i s i o n t o
effectively disobey the Naval Chief’s order?
Why was no one reprimanded for such a fatal
snafu? All of these unanswered questions have
led to speculation that a higher authority, one
higher than the Naval Chief, played a role.

Many suspicious eyes turned toward the
National Intelligence Service (NIS) for Nam
Jae-Joon, its chief, is known to be one of the
president’s confidantes and wielded more
power than his official position might suggest.
Two documents, retrieved from the Sewol,
seem to indicate that the NIS had been deeply
involved in the operation and management of
the Sewol. First, the Sewol’s emergency
contact diagram lists the NIS as the first point
of contact in case of accident. It and its sister
ship, the Ohamana, also owned by Chonghaejin,
w e r e t h e o n l y o n e s a m o n g t h e 1 7 l a r g e
passenger ferries that were required to report
an accident to the NIS before any other agency
such as the coast guard. Second, a laptop
computer retrieved from the sunken Sewol had
a document, titled “Items of Planned Work in

the Ship’s Passenger Area – List of Items
Identified by the NIS,” that listed 100 items
that the National Intelligence Service (NIS)
ordered repaired. Although the NIS later
claimed that it ordered those repairs for
security purposes, the list included such items
as vending machine installation, recycling bin
location, ceiling paint, ventilator clean-up, etc.
to which a security agency would not normally
pay attention unless it was involved in
managing the ship. According to the list, the
NIS even required the Sewol to submit an
employee wage report and the crew’s vacation
plan as if it had been involved in operating the
ferry. These documents fueled suspicions that
the NIS, as the real owner of the Sewol, was
implicated in foul play.

A laptop computer retrieved from the sunken Sewol
contained a document, titled “Items of Planned Work
in the Ship’s Passenger Area – List of Items Identified
by the NIS,” which listed 100 items that the National
Intelligence Service (NIS) had ordered repaired. This
document, together with another, fueled suspicions
that the NIS might have been the real owner of the
Sewol.

Why would the intelligence agency sacrifice a
ship? Pointing to the fact that the NIS had been

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7

on the hot seat before the Sewol disaster,
critics raised the suspicion that it needed a
scapegoat to divert attention. The NIS had
indeed been struggling to defend itself against
mounting evidence that it had been deeply
implicated in a fabricated spy incident. Yoo
Woo-Sung, a Chinese Korean who had defected
from North Korea to the South, was accused by
the NIS of working as a North Korean agent
after his defection. He responded by accusing
the NIS of falsely charging him. It was
discovered during a court trial that NIS
officials had used pressure and inhumane
treatment to force Mr. Yoo’s sister to testify
against him and some NIS officials had gone so
far as to forge three Chinese official documents
to present to the court as evidence. In response
to a query by a defense lawyer, the Chinese
Embassy relayed to the court an official
statement that the said documents were not
authentic, creating a diplomatic fiasco. Added
to the mounting evidence that the NIS had
been involved in the last presidential election
and other domestic politics, the spy fabrication
case could become the last straw for the NIS
leadership. Public outcry was so strong and
grew so rapidly that on April 15th Nam Jae-
Joon, Director of the NIS, had to make a public
apology for the spy fabrication although he also
made clear his intent to stay on the job.

The day after his press conference, the Sewol
sank. The accident diverted attention from the
NIS scandal. But the diversion did not last long
as evidences of the NIS’s implication began to
emerge. The Sewol’s emergency manual and
repair work list, unexpectedly discovered,
fueled suspicions about the NIS’s role and as
the media and the opposition parties focused
attention on this. As public suspicions grew,
Nam Jae-Joon, the intelligence chief, tendered
his resignation on May 22nd, and President
Park swiftly accepted it. Because neither he nor
she offered a compelling reason, the Lawyers
Alliance for Democracy pointed out in a
statement that there was ground to suspect
that NIS had been implicated in the Sewol’s

sinking and the failed rescue operation. Nam’s
resignation nonetheless helped shield the
ruling Saenuri Party from political liability just
1 0 d a y s b e f o r e a l o c a l e l e c t i o n . I t a l s o
protected the intelligence agency from
p a r l i a m e n t a r y i n s p e c t i o n , f o r t h e t o p
intelligence officer who was in charge of the
agency at the time of the accident was no
longer available to report to the Parliament’s
special committee on the Sewol.

Thus the parliamentary special committee
called on Chief of Staff Kim Ki-Choon, who is
commonly viewed as the real power in the
presidential office, to testify on the Sewol.
While evading most questions and doing his
b e s t t o c l e a r t h e B l u e H o u s e o f a n y
responsibility for the bungled rescue, he
nonetheless revealed an important fact in
response to questions about the president’s
whereabouts during the golden hours. He
testified that he and other officials reported to
the president via written reports or telephone
calls but there were no face-to-face meetings
until President Park showed up in the Central
Disaster Management Headquarters around
5PM. Her appearance there after seven hours
of missing in action was nationally televised. So
was her ignorant question: “if the passengers
are wearing a life vest, why is it so hard to find
them?” Apparently she was unaware that they
were trapped inside the overturned and
submerged ship and thus could not be seen in
the open sea. The President’s daily log, later
released via Representative Cho Won-Jin of the
ruling party to quell questions about her
whereabouts, only confirmed her absence, for it
failed to list a single face-to-face meeting. What
had she been doing for the seven hours? Where
was she?

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8

President Park Geun-Hye appeared at the Central
Disaster Management Headquarters around 5PM,
after 7 hours of absence that has never been
accounted for, and asked an ignorant question: “if
the passengers are wearing life vests, why is it so
hard to find them?” Apparently she was unaware
until then that they were trapped inside the
overturned and submerged ship and thus could not
be seen in the open sea.

Wherever President Park may have been on
April 16th, it is more than clear that the state,
from top to bottom, was absent from rescue
operations during the golden hours when the
passengers could have been rescued. What
looked like a strong national security state
failed to save people’s lives from the danger it
h a d c r e a t e d w i t h d e r e g u l a t i o n a n d
privatization. The Korean state proved a failed
one when it came to saving people’s lives from
a disaster it had helped create.

The Families Demand Truth and the State
Evades

The Sewol tragedy resulted from the collusion
of Korea’s sea mafia, neoliberal deregulation
run amok, the intelligence agency involved in
shadowy activities, and a president possibly
distracted by her private life. This would make
a good movie, except that it cost the lives of
324 people, mostly high school students leaving
their surviving parents and relatives still
grieving and searching for the truth. One of
them staged a hunger strike for 46 days to
demand an independent and exhaustive
investigation. The victims’ families demanded

that a special law be instituted to create an
independent committee with subpoena and
prosecutorial powers in order to find the causes
of the death of their beloved ones. They believe
that creating an independent committee is
critical to finding an answer to questions about
the Sewol’s sinking and the government’s
failure to rescue, because all other methods
have proved abortive.

The victims’ families have been praying, literally,
that a special law be instituted in order to unearth
the truth about the Sewol tragedy, only to be blocked
by the police. President Park has thus far rejected
their plea.

The national parliament on May 29 created a
special committee to investigate the Sewol
a c c i d e n t , b u t t h e c o m m i t t e e p r o v e d
dysfunctional from the beginning. Its operation
was stymied by repeated clashes over what to
do between the two main political parties, the
conservative Saenuri Party and the liberal
D e m o c r a t i c A l l i a n c e f o r N e w P o l i t i c s .
Furthermore, the ministries and agencies,
called to report to the special committee,
dragged their feet and revealed little that was
new. The Blue House made an effective
investigation difficult by releasing only 13 of
the 269 materials requested by liberal
members of the committee two days before it
was due to testify. The committee ended its
work without even holding a hearing. The
special committee failed to bring out the truth,

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9

as the Sewol victims’ families committee noted.

The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI),
Korea’s counterpart to the U.S. Government
Accountability Office (except that it is part of
t h e e x e c u t i v e b r a n c h o f t h e K o r e a n
government) conducted its own investigation.
After auditing the Blue House, it concluded that
the presidential office was not responsible for
the Sewol failure. The sole basis for its
c o n c l u s i o n s e e m e d t o b e a B l u e H o u s e
statement that “the Blue House is not the
control tower of disaster management.” It
turned out that the BAI sent a few low-ranking
officials to audit the Blue House, and they
completed their work without even examining
the reports that had been submitted to the
president on the day of the accident.

Prosecutors and the police have produced mor