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An image from a candlelit rally in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square calling for a new investigation into the Sewol ferry tragedy. (Kang Chang-kwang, staff photographer)

“The leaders of the Coast Guard and the officers who were dispatched to the scene of the accident share in the responsibility for the negligent rescue of the passengers.”

It was July 2015, and Hon. Seo Gyeong-hwan, a judge with the 6th criminal division at the Gwangju High Court, had just reduced the sentence of Kim Gyeong-il, former captain of Coast Guard Vessel 123, from four years to three. A lower court had convicted Kim of involuntary manslaughter on the job, connected with the botched efforts to rescue passengers in the tragic sinking of the Sewol ferry. The court knocked a year off Kim’s sentence on the grounds that he shouldn’t be held solely responsible for the failed rescue attempt, and that other Coast Guard officials should share the blame.

On Jan. 6, 2020 — five years and nine months after the accident — a special team of investigators into the Sewol tragedy asked a judge to issue detention warrants for Kim Suk-kyoon, head of the Coast Guard at the time of the accident, and other senior officials in the Coast Guard, indicating that that organization, and the South Korean state itself, can at last be held accountable.

It’s generally thought that one of the biggest reasons the ferry rescue failed is that passengers were never told to evacuate. No one in the Coast Guard leadership ordered such an evacuation, and ferry crew members used the onboard speakers to instruct passengers to remain where they were. Only the crew members escaped, leaving 304 people to die.

At 8:52 am on the day the ferry went down, news of the accident reached the authorities when a passenger contacted 119, South Korea’s emergency number. By 8:57 am, just five minutes later, a group chat for updates on the accident was set up, linking the situation rooms of the Mokpo Coast Guard Office, the Yellow Sea Coast Guard Office, and the Coast Guard headquarters. But no orders to initiate rescue operations were made in the group chat.

While the situation room at the Yellow Sea Coast Guard Office had learned the details about the situation onboard the ferry, the only instructions given were to let the ferry captain decide whether or not to order an evacuation. Even when the Coast Guard headquarters was informed that more than half the passengers were trapped aboard the ship, it didn’t instruct the Coast Guard to enter the ship or order an evacuation. Kim Mun-hong, then head of the Mokpo Coast Guard Office, should have flown a helicopter to the scene of the accident to supervise the rescue, but he stayed on Vessel 3009 and didn’t give any instructions until 9:49 am.

After the failure of the rescue operation, the Coast Guard rushed to conceal its responsibility. When public accusations were made that the Coast Guard leadership had been negligent in the rescue attempt and hadn’t even ordered an evacuation, the Coast Guard held a press conference in which it falsely claimed to have given the evacuation order several times. Documents provided by the Special Sewol Investigation Commission show that this press conference was organized on the instructions of Kim Suk-kyoon, then head of the Coast Guard. That same official ordered Lee Chun-jae, then head of the Coast Guard’s Security and Safety Bureau, to compose an official document called “Contentions About First Response and the Search and Rescue,” which falsely claimed that evacuation orders were given.

For the most part, the Coast Guard’s bungled response and falsified documents had already turned up in the 2014 investigation. Although Kim Gyeong-il was the only person indicted at the time, the prosecutors had learned of these matters and had in fact planned to investigate the entire Coast Guard leadership. In an investigation report drawn up on May 29, 2014, the prosecutors said they expected the official suspects to include “public servants responsible for making reports about the Sewol ferry accident, disseminating information about the situation, and supervising the search and rescue activities at the Coast Guard headquarters, the Yellow Sea Coast Guard Office, the Mokpo Coast Guard Office, the Coast Guard Central Rescue Headquarters, and the Jin Island Vessel Traffic Services Center.”

But the prosecutors’ investigation was strangled in the cradle by “external pressure” — namely, officials at the Blue House and Ministry of Justice. When the prosecutors raided the Coast Guard headquarters in June 2014, Woo Byung-woo, then Blue House senior secretary for civil affairs, made an intimidating phone call. Hwang Kyo-ahn, then Justice Minister, has also been accused of putting pressure on prosecutors, who were considering whether to ask the courts for a detention warrant against Kim Gyeong-il, to drop the charge of involuntary manslaughter on the job.

Some analysts think the prosecutors’ request for detention warrants is the first step toward holding the Park Geun-hye administration responsible for the botched rescue. “The crux of the Park administration’s responsibility was the failure of the first response by the Coast Guard leadership and the Blue House’s ‘control tower.’ Holding the Coast Guard leaders responsible would pave the way for investigating the Blue House’s ‘control tower,’” said Lee Jeong-il, an attorney on the Sewol ferry task force organized by MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society.

By Hwang Joon-bum, Washington correspondent

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