hankyoreh

Aug. 27. The meetings ended without progress. (National Assembly photo pool)

By Ha Eo-young, staff reporter

“We want to talk about building a safe society and setting up a thorough fact-finding commission that will not hesitate to investigate anyone.”

-Yoo Kyung-geun, spokesperson for the Sewol Victims’ Family Committee

On Aug. 27, the sixtieth day of their sit-in in front of the Blue House, the Family Committee held a press conference and called once again for the legislation of the special Sewol Law, which is meant to create a fact-finding commission to thoroughly investigate the Sewol tragedy. On Tuesday, parents of the surviving students sent a petition asking for the president to make a bold decision. “We are asking for a thorough investigation of the tragedy to be conducted, if only for the sake of the surviving children. To do this, we need a special law with actual substance,” they urged.

“The surviving children will never forget how the Coast Guard stood by and watched without trying to rescue them and the moments when they heard the announcement on the loudspeakers telling them to stay where they were. How do you think the surviving children feel when they see the society that did nothing to save them making a concerted effort not to avoid properly investigating the tragedy?” the parents asked.

After the failure of the second round of negotiations between the ruling and opposition parties, the victims’ families are expressing their regret that the debate about the special Sewol Law was caught up in political bickering, focusing less on determining the truth and more on President Park Geun-hye’s mysterious seven hours, rumors about compensation, and the question of whether Blue House officials will be called as witnesses.

The families have about 100 questions that they want definite answers to. The main issues related to the causes of and responsibility for the accident are whether there were any signs of problems before the accident occurred at 8:48 am, what was discussed over the phone by crew members and company employees on the day of the accident about misstating the amount of cargo, and suspicions about the relationship between the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the Sewol disclosed in a NIS document that came to light recently.

The families are also asking for clarification about who is responsible for the failed rescue effort, including the rescue work in the three days after the accident (inflating the number of workers, the truth about air pockets), the failure of the control center and the early rescue effort (communication between the Sewol and the emergency centers on Jindo and in Mokpo, why the joint military and police operation failed), and measures taken by government agencies including the Blue House.

The families also want to know the truth about what reports the President received and what orders she gave during the seven hours after the accident, but they are making clear that this is not connected with the president’s private life, as the government and the ruling party have claimed.

“The reason that the families want the fact-finding commission to have investigative and prosecutorial authority is that they learned during the parliamentary investigation of the Sewol tragedy that without the authority to investigate there is nothing that can be done about government agencies that refuse to cooperate,” said Park Ju-min, legal counsel for the family committee.

“Government agencies’ lack of cooperation to get to the bottom of what happened during the tragedy has continued from the day of the tragedy until now,” Park said. When the Blue House made its report in the parliamentary investigation, it only provided 13 of the 269 total documents (4.8%) requested by the New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD) and other opposition parties.

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