hankyoreh

The disaster that followed the sinking of the Sewol ferry could have been avoided if only the initial response had been more prompt. The tragic loss of life is largely the fault of the captain and crew, who fled the ship abandoning the passengers, and without even taking measures or making announcements to help them evacuate. It is entirely understandable that the investigators have arrested the captain and senior crew members and charged them with homicide through negligence for shirking their duty to protect the passengers. Nevertheless, one cannot help but ask whether they are really the only ones who should be held responsible for this tragedy.

During questioning, the crew told investigators that they had never received any safety training to prepare them for an emergency situation. That is pathetic. The Seafarers Act and other regulations state that crew members are supposed to receiving emergency training - including fire drills and lifeboat drills - once every ten days. The lifeboats are supposed to be put in the water for a drill every other month, and an emergency drill has to be held within 24 hours of leaving port when more than 25% of the crew members are new. The reason that the same drills are repeated again and again is so that the crew can respond automatically during a crisis situation, when it is common for people’s judgment to be severely impaired.

On board the Sewol, these regulations and practices were completely disregarded. There were not even any perfunctory drills. Last year, the amount of money that Cheonghaejin Shipping, the company that operated the Sewol, spent on safety education and other forms of training for its crew amounted to only 541,000 won (US$520). There was little point in expecting the crew of the Sewol to have smoothly handled the evacuation of the ship during an emergency.

But there is an even more fundamental problem here. Fifteen of the 29 crew members on the Sewol were on contracts lasting from six months to a year. The captain, who was responsible for saving as many lives as possible during a crisis, was on a one-year contract, and 12 of the 17 members of the deck crew and the machine room, who are regarded as essential to running a passenger ship, were irregular workers. It is no wonder that they had trouble responding to a crisis in an organized fashion.

It could not have been easy for the captain, who was an irregular worker, to properly exercise his command over a crew in which regular and irregular workers were mixed together like water and oil. In fact, the person on the Sewol who was in communication with the Jindo maritime control center at the critical moment when the ship was sinking was not the captain but the first mate, a regular worker. After the command system based on the captain collapsed, no one was able to evacuate the passengers or to order them to leave the ship in the ensuing confusion.

The reason that a captain is entrusted with great authority is because he or she has the high responsibility and duty of preserving the safety and the lives of the passengers. Great authority implies great responsibility. Assigning irregular workers to the post of captain and other key positions on the ship implied that the company did not think very highly of the safety of its passengers. And on top of that, they were negligent about carrying out safety drills. Investigators should also assess the responsibility of the shipping company. In addition, now is the time to correct the faulty practice of trying to cut costs by hiring irregular workers for positions that involve great responsibility and danger.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]