hankyoreh

By Song Ho-kyun and Lee Jung-gook, staff reporters

Agitated shouting in front of the President. Water bottles hurled at the head of the Prime Minister. Cries of “Stop lying!” directed at the Minister of Oceans and Fisheries for more than eight hours. The Coast Guard chief and deputy having their radios snatched away and being grabbed by the collar. Reporters being chased away, cameras smashed.

With more and more signs of inattention to safety, a non-functioning government response system, and collusion between the ferry operator and oversight agencies. This accident is similar to other past accidents in South Korea, as most of the damage was avoidable. But the anger felt by families of the Sewol victims toward the government and politicians seems more intense than ever before.

“Is that what you call a rescue, just sitting there?”

“Just tell us something.”

“We asked you to save lives. We asked you to get them out of the sea.”

“You need to take responsibility for what you said.”

“Stop having meetings and go rescue those kids.”

On Apr. 24, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Lee Ju-young and Coast Guard chief Kim Seok-kyun and deputy Choi Sang-hwan were surrounded by family members who had rushed in from Paengmok Port in Jindo. The anger of the families left the officials unable to raise their heads. Family members also chased away reporters who were at the scene.

“Ever since the Sewol capsized, images of hundreds of passengers sinking have been broadcast in real time,” said Mok Jin-whyu, a professor of administration at Kookmin University. “South Koreans have had a similar shock to what Americans experienced watching the events of 9/11 unfold. That’s why the family members, and the rest of the South Korean public, have been angrier to see this than ever before.”

There’s another reason for the anger, one expressed by an angry relative of a missing passenger at Jindo Gymnasium on Apr. 25.

“The Countermeasure Headquarters said the weather was good and we should expect progress, but the number of bodies recovered each day has actually dropped,” the relative said. “We’re not saying they have to find everybody right away. If there’s a problem, they should just give a full explanation and tell us why things aren’t going the way they’re supposed to. But they don’t have a grasp on it. They’re just running around blindly, and meanwhile they’re telling us to wait.”

The message is clear: after a repeated cycle of covering things up, blowing them out of proportion, or hemming and hawing - rather than giving accurate information and asking for the public’s understanding - people feel they can’t trust the government any longer.

Indeed, the government has lost virtually all of the public’s confidence as the final authority in matters of disaster management. The day before, family members grabbed Lee Ju-young and told him, “We don’t know anything about the ‘700 divers’ they mentioned on TV. The only people in the ocean right now are the eight divers.”

It was a sign of distrust in the government’s announcements, which emphasize the staff and equipment on standby to broadcast its full commitment to the rescue effort. It has even resorted to staging displays, including one instance when a Ship Salvage Unit (SSU) diver on break was instructed to put on a diving suit and splashed with water before appearing for an interview. On Apr. 25, it announced that “224 vessels, 35 aircraft, and 727 divers are currently involved in the search effort.” The focus has been on maximizing the public relations effect by including all the personnel and equipment on standby - all while shrugging off the distrust of the victims’ family members.

Another relative of a missing passenger said, “I’d blame the press more than the government.” Indeed, the press has been touting the rescue operation as the “largest in history,” while quoting government announcements more or less verbatim.

“The rescue effort isn’t going well, but [the press] only listen to the government,” the relative said. “They haven’t listened to us. They edit it up and send out the version they like.”

Further fueling the distrust are sensationalized reports that have rubbed salt into the family members’ wounds. A report on the evening of Apr. 21 mentioned the discovery of “multiple bodies with broken fingers,” but further investigation showed only one victim who had been wearing a cast from a fracture that had occurred before the sinking. This did not stop a flood of speculative and overblown reports from making the news the next day, mentioning the “discovery of a number of bodies of passengers who had fractured their fingers in their desperate struggle to escape.”

“The reason people don’t trust the media is because the reports aren’t centered on the victims,” said Kim Seo-jung, a professor of media studies at Sungkonghoe University. “The press needs to be asking what the real situation is right now, how the rescue is being carried out, and what the cause of the accident was, but instead all the reports are designed to satisfy curiosity, with a few people singled out as scapegoats.”

Mok Jin-whyu said prosecutors and the press should not narrow responsibility for the sinking to the captain, crew, and certain religious groups alone.

“These kinds of attempts to cover up the government’s errors will only cause the anger to grow,” he cautioned.

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