Coast Guard Captain Jailed over Sewol Tragedy

A former South Korea’s Coast Guard ship commander Kim Kyoung-il was sentenced to four years in prison for failing to take proper measures during the evacuation of the passengers from the ferry that sank in April 2014, killing more than 300, mostly high school students, Yonhap reports.

The Gwangju District Court fund Kim guilty of negligence and tampering with the work reports to a certain extent. He was also found to have lied to the media about his announcements to the passengers to evacuate.

“Kim simply asked his subordinates to rescue those who were readily visible and failed to evacuate hundreds inside,” Yonhap reported Judge Lim Jeong-yeop as saying in the ruling. “With such negligence, he has scarred the families of the victims for life.”

However, the judge deemed that Kim’s offences were less serious then those of the ferry’s owner Kim Han-Sik, who was found guilty of making structural changes to the ship, as well as overloaded it with cargo and passengers. Kim Han-Sik was sentenced to 10 years in  prison.

Aside to Han-Sik, four other company officials were sentenced to three to six years in prison on similar charges, with two more employees getting suspended prison sentences, according to AP.

The Sewol captain Joon-Seok was sentenced to 36 years of prison for gross negligence.

The captain and three of his crew members were put on homicide trial as they were the first to abandon the ferry when it listed.

The ship’s chief engineer received a 30-year prison sentence while thirteen other crew members were sentenced to up to 20 years in jail.

The captain and two other crew members of the ill-fated ferry filed appeals to their respective verdicts.

World Maritime News Staff