hankyoreh

an electronic watch shows the time 4:16

By Noh Hyun-woong, staff reporter

Was there no state to speak of at the scene of last April’s Sewol ferry sinking?

According to investigation results announced by the prosecutors on Oct. 6, the Coast Guard wasted valuable time, lending weight to claims that the government’s fumbled response turned a simple accident into a horrific tragedy. The latest claim is that in addition to missing an opportunity to save lives by sending a single small vessel to the scene, the agency also afforded special treatment to a specific company during the search and rescue process. In total, there were three “golden moments” that the Coast Guard let go - at the cost of 304 lives.

West Sea Coast Guard station ship 123 was tasked with patrolling the waters in Coastal Zone 3 near Jindo, South Jeolla Province the morning of the accident on Apr. 16. After the first 119 emergency call on the sinking from high school student Choi Deok-ha (who was later found dead), the Mokpo Coast Guard station situation room issued an order at around 8:57 to send ship 123 to the scene. At roughly 9:14, the vessel’s captain, surnamed Kim, was appointed commander for the accident scene. The boat was tasked with surveying the accident and performing a swift rescue effort according to the Coast Guard search and rescue manual.

But after arriving at the scene at 9:30, Kim issued no evacuation order for the Sewol, despite ship 123 having a microphone system rigged up. The manual’s instruction for capsizes is to “confirm the response from remaining personnel on the vessel and send a signal via loudspeaker.” Instead, the 47 minutes of “golden time” until the Sewol’s deck was fully submerged at 10:17 were wasted.

The revelations about Kim‘s lack of urgency while in charge of rescue efforts at the accident scene were seen by many as especially disturbing. At the Gwangju District Court trial of Sewol crew members, Park Hyeong-ju of the Gachon University Interdisciplinary Skyscraper Disaster Prevention Center presented simulation findings showing all passengers could have been evacuated in six minutes and 17 seconds if ship 123 had given the order when Sewol captain Lee Jun-seok, 69, was rescued at 9:45.

Barges are typically used as base camps for underwater search efforts. They can be fitted with decompression chambers and diving guide lines, and provide a place for divers to wait and prepare between shifts.

Once the Sewol was nearly completely submerged at 10:34 am on Apr. 16, barge-based underwater search efforts were virtually the only hope for rescuing any surviving passengers. But Coast Guard deputy chief Choi Sang-hwan and other agency leaders were more focused at the time on waiting for the Libero, a barge that was then under construction at Undine Marine Industries. The 2003 Geumho, one of Undine’s mini-barges that arrived at the scene as a “foot in the door,” was too small to be of use.

But an investigation by prosecutors found around 22 barges in the waters off South Jeolla Province that could have arrived faster than the Libero. Meanwhile, underwater search vessels fitted with diving equipment - including the Nurian and Seamuse - had already arrived at the scene, but never received orders from the Coast Guard. Rescue workers from the Coast Guard underwater demolition team (UDT) and ship salvage unit (SSU) were on the scene the day of the sinking, but without the Libero they had no base for operations.

As more time passed without a full-fledged rescue effort, family members of the passengers held out hopes that air pockets might offer a faint chance at survival.

The evidence so far suggests the Coast Guard failed to respond properly from the earliest operation of its control center. It was 8:49 am on Apr. 16 when Sewol crew members first sensed a problem with the vessel. The boat had lost balance during a sharp turn, and the captain had cut the engines.

Just a short distance away, the Jindo Coast Guard’s vessel traffic service (VTS) center had no knowledge of what was happening in its waters. The main reason was neglect of duties: while two night shift officers should have been observing vessels on the monitors, the center had only one officer on duty. It was not until 9:07 that the Sewol began communicating with the center in Jindo, via the Jeju control center and Mokpo Coast Guard station. As a result, another precious 18 minutes were lost.

“Even when they had just one person on duty, they would be doing putting practice in the office or looking at their smartphone,” said an official from the prosecutors, on condition of anonymity. “What we found was a consistent lack of diligence.”

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