hankyoreh

Investigators from the prosecutors load documents seized from the residence of Cheonghaejin Marine owner Yoo Byeong-eun in Seoul’s Seocho district

By Lee Kyung-mi and Kim Young-dong, staff reporters in Seoul and Mokpo

It was revealed on Apr. 23 that a student from Danwon High School was the first person to report that the Sewol ferry was going down, and it reportedly was this call that led the Coast Guard to dispatch a patrol ship. The Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) Center on Jeju Island, which first received word about the Sewol, had been reported to have passed news of the accident to the Coast Guard before the ship was dispatch, but this news was not actually communicated to the Mokpo Coast Guard until after the dispatch of the ship. Had the student not called, the ensuing events might have been even more terrible.

According to sources with the Jeju Coast Guard on Apr. 22, a second-year student at Danwon High School in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province surnamed Choi called 119, the Korean emergency number, at 8:52 am from aboard the Sewol on Apr. 16. Two minutes later, at 8:54 am, he was connected to the Mokpo Coast Guard, which dispatched patrol vessel No. 123 at 8:58 am. Four minutes were wasted as the Coast Guard tried to figure out the name of the ship and the location of the accident.

Apr. 23. Yoo is the owner of the company that was operating the Sewol ferry. (Yonhap News)

The Sewol reported the situation to the Jeju VTS Center at 8:55 am, three minutes after Choi called. One minute later, at 8:56, the center called the Jeju Coast Guard. In a phone interview with the Hankyoreh, a source with the Jeju Coast Guard explained that they contacted the Mokpo Coast Guard at 8:59 am after figuring out the situation, only to find that a patrol ship had already been dispatched.

After that, the Jeju Coast Guard called the Jindo Control Center at 9:02 am to confirm that they had been informed of developments. The source at the coast guard said that the line was busy at the Jindo Control Center, leading them to believe that the Center had already heard about the ferry accident and was responding to the situation.

But as it turned out, the Jindo Control Center was unaware of what was happening to the Sewol. The Mokpo Coast Guard had not gotten in touch with the Jindo Control Center immediately after sending the patrol vessel. It was not until 9:06 am, eight minutes after the vessel embarked, that the Mokpo Coast Guard notified the Jindo Control Center of the situation. At this point, the Jindo Control finally heard the news about the Sewol and began to gather facts, including the number of people aboard the ferry.

The Coast Guard has said that it received the distress call at 8:58 am. But in fact, that was when the patrol vessel was dispatched. And this vessel was not dispatched after being contacted by the Jeju Island Control Center, but rather because the Coast Guard had gotten a call from a student aboard the sinking ferry. There are suspicions that the Coast Guard reported the time of the distress call as later than it actually was in order to conceal the fact that the decision to dispatch a patrol craft has been based on a call from a student.

Since the Coast Guard patrol vessel was 30km from the site of the accident when it received orders to embark, it did not arrive until 9:30 am. In the meantime, the captain, the mates, the engineers, and the rest of the crew first told passengers to remain in their cabins and then gathered at the bridge of the ship to escape, staying in contact on their personal wireless devices and moving along passageways that only they knew.

As soon as the patrol vessel reached the ferry, these 15 crew members were the first to be rescued. In the end, the crew members were able to get away from the scene of the accident by boarding the Coast Guard patrol ship that the student had called. Choi, the student who saved the lives of 174 persons by bravely making a call in a dangerous situation, is currently on the list of missing persons.

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