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Emergency crews from the navy and private vessels work to search for and rescue survivors of the Sewol

By Kim Kyu-nam, staff reporter

One of the reasons that President Park Geun-hye and the Blue House have to make clear what briefings she received and what actions she ordered on Apr. 16, the day of the Sewol tragedy, is that some parts of the explanations that the Blue House provided after the tragedy don’t make sense.

One example is the claim that President Park placed a call to Kim Seok-gyun, chief of the Coast Guard, at 10:30 am and told him to do everything he could to rescue the passengers of the Sewol even if it meant bringing in the special forces. This is the only example of Park making contact with someone outside the Blue House from the time she was first briefed about the accident until 5 pm, seven hours later, when she visited the Central Disaster Headquarters.

Considering various evidence and records, there does not appear to be any reason to doubt that Park actually spoke on the phone with Kim. However, uncertainty remains about the timing of the phone call provided by the Blue House.

The time that Park and Kim are supposed to have spoken on the phone is 10:30 am. But it was exactly 10:30 when Blue House spokesperson Min Kyung-wook said during a briefing at the Blue House that Park had called Kim on the phone and given him the necessary instructions, including deploying the Coast Guard special forces.

It is not clear whether the time the Blue House said the phone call took place is not accurate, or whether Min had been told that Park would be calling Kim on the phone later and briefed the media about this before it took place.

In connection with this, there are some suspicious sections in the testimony that Kim Kyou-hyun, first vice director of the National Security Office, gave before the House Steering Committee of the National Assembly on July 8. Kim Kyu-hyun was explaining how Park gave directions to the Coast Guard via the national security chief after she had been briefed about the tragedy. “After speaking to the president on the phone (10:15 am), the National Security Chief immediately tried calling the chief of the Coast Guard, but he could not be reached because he was on a helicopter,” Kim said.

But according to documents that the Coast Guard submitted to the National Assembly about the whereabouts of the Coast Guard director, Kim was overseeing the situation in the crisis management room at the Coast Guard headquarters at 10:15 am and did not board the helicopter until 10:50 am. An explanation is needed about whether Kim provoked suspicions by providing incorrect information to the National Assembly, or whether there was some other reason.

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