The Sewol Tragedy: Part III – The Fallout

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The capsized Sewol (source)

One cannot get away from events in this age; the 24-hour news coverage and the Internet would not allow it. The Sewol disaster unfolded in real time in front of a horrified nation. When more than 300 lives–vast majority of them children–senselessly perish in an entirely preventable accident, it cannot help but affect the public. Similar reaction occurred in the United States, following the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which dozens of young children died at the hands of a deranged shooter. 

But as horrific as it was, the Newtown shooting was over within an hour. Not so with the Sewol sinking. The ship sank for more an hour. The rescue effort subsequently unfolded for days, on live television. In the aftermath of the disaster, every last bit of incompetence from every corner of Korean society was magnified, amplified. It drove Koreans toward self-loathing, cynicism, and finally anger toward the political system.

What do You do When Everything Falls Apart?

The saying goes:  failure is an orphan, but success has a million parents. But in the Sewol disaster, the devastating failure had a million parents:  the captain who abandoned the ship, the ferry company that dangerously overstocked the ship, government that let deregulation run wild. Unfortunately, the failures did not stop when the ship sank. The hits continued to come from all directions: from the media, the government and the society as a whole.

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First, the media. Purely from the perspective of mental impact, perhaps the most devastating error was the media’s early reports that everyone aboard the Sewol was rescued. The cause of this error is under investigation, but it appears fairly clear that the media reported an unconfirmed rumor in the race to break the news first. This misfire significantly impacted the manner in which Korean public processed the news. When Koreans first learned the news about the Sewol sinking on the morning of April 16–around 11 a.m., 30 minutes after the ship completely capsized–they took it as a mildly scary event with no true harm done. The complacency set by the encouraging news made the full scale of the true horror much more destructive. Instead of no casualty, there were more than 300 missing, most of them high school students.

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In the hours following the sinking, the media landscape in Korea was the lowest circle of hell in disaster porno. Because the Internet age came to Korea earlier than virtually any other country in the world, the issues that the Internet age created have affected Korea for longer, and more severely. The worst instincts for clickbaiting and sensationalism afflicted every part of the media, from tabloids to the more respected papers.

Newsis, an up-and-coming online newspaper infiltrated Danwon High School, and took a staged photo of a dead student by setting up an open notebook on the desk. Chosun Ilbo–the conservative newspaper that prides in its ability to steer Korean public opinion on any given issue–released an article discussing which insurance companies insured the Sewol, and what the expected payout was supposed to be while the ship was still sinking. Respected TV stations like SBS and jTBC harassed the freshly-rescued survivors for an interview. A reporter from SBS attempted to interview a six year old child, the rest of whose family perished in the ship. On a live television, a reporter from jTBC asked a rescued Danwon High School student if he knew his friends died, which caused the student to crumble in tears.

Second, the government. Much like the media, the government tortured the families of those aboard the Sewol as well as Korean public with a false promise: the possibility that there may be survivors in the capsized ship thanks to the supposed “air pockets.” With a benefit of the hindsight, this promise was most likely illusory. Yet, if those in Korean government who were responsible for the rescue genuinely believed the possibility of air pockets, they moved far too slowly to capitalize on the opportunity.

Korea’s Coast Guard did not have enough resources to rescue people from a capsizing ship, but other disaster-response authorities did. The Sewol’s passenger made the first emergency call to the Coast Guard at 8:52 a.m. But the Coast Guard did not inform the Ministry of Public Security and Administration–which had more sophisticated rescue ships and helicopters to deploy–until 9:30 a.m. In fact, the Ministry first learned the accident from the television news rather than its subordinate. It was not until 9:31 a.m. until the Blue House was notified. By then, the ship was three minutes away from the point at which no escape was possible.

Further, the initial report to the government said nothing to indicate that a massive disaster was unfolding; it simply said that the Sewol was sinking, and the rescue was in progress. Incredibly, even after 5 p.m.–half a day after the ship sank–it appears that President Park Geun-hye did not have a clear idea of what exactly happened. During her visit to the rescue central, the President asked why the students could not be saved if they were wearing life jackets–implying that, in her understanding, the Sewol’s passengers were floating in the sea rather than trapped inside the ship.

President Park Geun-hye at the disaster central. (source)

The President was hardly alone in not having a clear sense of exactly what happened. Until 4:30 p.m.–again, half a day after the ship sank–the rescue central could not even figure out exactly how many people were on board on the Sewol, and how many were rescued. At 2 p.m., the rescue central announced that 368 were rescued, only to halve the number at 4:30 p.m. to 164 rescued. (The final tally of rescued passengers is 174.) When the Blue House was criticized for not having adequate information about the disaster, a senior Blue House official gave a tone-deaf response that the Blue House was not the “control tower” for disasters. While technically correct, this type of response could not help but give off the impression that the government was abdicating its duty to keep people safe.

Allegations of graft and corruption also emerged even as the rescue was progressing. There were allegations that the Coast Guard prevented the Navy divers from entering the water, such that the Coast Guard’s private contractor (called Undine Marine Industry) could send its divers first. This led to suspicion that the Coast Guard delayed the rescue effort for the sake of taking care of its contractor. Because the government initially represented that there might be survivors in the overturned ship, it could not avoid the severe criticism that they were wasting precious time to play favorites.

Third, the society. Nearly as soon as the news broke, the Internet trolls in Korea’s cyberspace were out in full force. Within minutes after the Sewol sinking was reported on the Internet, the vilest comments imaginable began appearing on the news story. (Here is a selection of them. I will not translate.) When the picture of Park Ji-yeong (the heroic 22-year-old crew member who drowned after saving dozens of children) appeared on the news, scores of god-awful lewd comments appeared below. It came to a point where Naver, Korea’s largest search engine, put up a notice urging its users to not add comments injuring the victims’ dignity. The media packaged those trolling comments into another round of clickbait news stories, fueling further outrage.

The situation was only slightly better offline. (Actually, it is not clear if it is better or worse that people were willing to say the same crap publicly.) Jo Gwang-jak, a pastor and the vice president of the conservative Christian Council of Korea said: “The low-income kids should have gone to a cheaper destination for their school trip. Why were they on a boat to Jeju and have this happen?” (Jo later resigned after much criticism.) Kim Si-gon, the head of new reporting at KBS, suggested that the sinking of the Sewol was not a big deal because more people die from traffic accidents. The enraged families of the Sewol victims protested in front of the KBS overnight, demanding apology. (Kim later resigned.)

Families of the Sewol victims protesting in front of KBS. Each one is holding a picture of the deceased, which is used in a Korean style funeral. (source)

Insensitivity was only one part of the way in which Korean society turned into a monster in the face of the disaster. Soon after the news broke, Facebook and other social networking sites were flooded with photo captures of text messages and instant messages, supposedly sent by Danwon High School who were still trapped inside the ship alive. Families of the students desperately latched onto them. But they were all fake. When arrested, the fabricators of the messages said they were hoping to drive up the subscribers to their social networking site accounts so that they may later sell them.

There is an even more brazen case of celebrity-seeking. One woman, who claimed to be a rescue diver, gave a live interview with a TV station to claim that another diver heard survivors from inside the ship, but the government is letting them die by not allowing regular divers join the rescue effort. This was a lie, as she was not at all a rescue diver. (In fact, it was revealed later that the woman has a long history of lying to gain celebrity. In another instance, she claimed that she was a cousin of T-ara’s Hwayoung to take pictures with idol groups.)

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Major disaster like the Sewol sinking has not struck Korea in a decade, or two decades depending on how one qualifies a “major disaster” that is comparable to the Sewol sinking. In 2003, 192 people died in a subway fire in Daegu, but the fire was a result of an arson. To find a death-by-thousand-cuts disaster like the Sewol sinking, one may have to go back to 1995 when a department store in Seoul that illegally modified its structure collapsed, killing more than 500. By 2014, Koreans were gaining confidence that the bad old days were behind them.

The Sewol tragedy shattered that confidence. Every major institution of Korean society–the government, the media, the church, the civil society–failed to properly function in some form or another. This total failure stunned Koreans. Without any institution in which to place their trust, Korean public first recoiled in self-loathing: what were we doing, letting hundreds of young children die on an illegally modified ship? Then followed cynicism and despair: perhaps nothing can be done, because something ingrained deep inside Korea’s culture that inevitably drew them toward disaster. The depression was widespread and palpable: consumer spending in Korea in the later part of April dropped like a rock, similar to the way in which Americans responded to the 9/11 terrorism.

Next came the indignation against those responsible of preventing this disaster. Why couldn’t the Coast Guard save a single person from inside the ship? Why couldn’t the Ministry of Public Security put together the disaster response team more quickly? And why couldn’t the president figure out what was going on for more than half a day?

President Park’s Katrina Moment

President Park Geun-hye had only been elected a year ago, in a solid victory after the hotly contested presidential election. Throughout the presidential campaign, the fact that she was the daughter of the late president and dictator Park Chung-hee hampered her numbers. One of the turning points of the presidential campaign was when Park courageously recognized that the reign of her father–who ruled the country for 16 years after taking power by rolling into Seoul with tanks–violated the spirit of Korea’s constitution and delayed the advent of democracy in Korea. This historic apologia by Park Geun-hye played a key role in her election, as it allayed the voter’s fears that Korea was not about to travel backward toward her father’s dictatorship.

In its first year, however, the Park administration began assuming a dictatorial posture that was not unlike her father’s. As soon as she was elected, it was uncovered that Korea’s spy agency and the military were engaged in a massive operation to sway the election by adding Internet comments and sending out tweets over Twitter, amplifying the Park campaign’s message. When the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office began prosecuting the head of the spy agency, the Ministry of Justice ordered an audit over the SPO–which caused the Prosecutor General to resign rather than suffer the indignity.

Contrary to her campaign promise, Park began taking first steps to privitize Korea’s railways. When the railway union went into a strike in protest, Park sent thousands of policemen to arrest the union leaders based on an arrest warrant that the court later quashed. When the police got the wind that the union leaders fled their offices and escaped to the building next door–which belonged to a liberal newspaper–the police took a battering ram the newspaper’s offices and ransacked the premises.

The Sewol tragedy struck as the public confidence in the Park administration was on the decline. The tragedy, standing alone, was enough of a damage to the administration; one of Park’s major campaign promises was to enhance public safety. Park even changed the name of the Ministry of Public Administration and Security to Ministry of Security and Public Administration, to emphasize the government’s responsibility for public safety. But any support that Park garnered by leveraging the public safety angle went underwater with the Sewol.

Still, the Park administration could have handled the crisis better. But it did not. Instead, it turned toward its dictatorial instinct, treating the angered people as its enemy rather than the people whom the president was elected to represent.

The first sign of trouble occurred five days into the search process. The family of the Sewol victims, gathered in a gym in Jindo that served as a makeshift shelter for the families, became restless in anger. Someone suggested visiting the President at Blue House; immediately, a crowd of 300 formed. But they were stopped as soon as they stepped outside of the gym; a hundred policemen were waiting for them. As it turned out, the government had planted plainclothes police inside the gym to conduct surveillance on the families. The families tried to rent a bus to go up to Seoul, but the government already told all the bus companies in the area to stonewall the families. Desperate, the families began walking toward Seoul in the middle of the night, trying to cover 200 miles on foot. Nearly a thousand policemen forcibly stopped them at the bridge connecting the Jindo Island and the mainland. Even after this episode, the families of the Sewol victims came under constant surveillance by plainclothes policemen for signs of trouble.

The government also cracked down on criticism of the rescue effort, while tightening its control over the media. Daegu Metropolitan Office of Education censured an area public school teacher who criticized the president on Facebook. Program directors at television station who complained that the news was not sufficiently critical of the President were suspended. (Recall that, in Korea, the government indirectly controls two of the three network TV stations.) In fact, the government directly ordered KBS to avoid criticizing the Coast Guard and the rescue effort.

Needless to say, this is a terrible response by the Park administration. Beyond the obvious creepiness and infringement of the fundamental freedom of movement, press and speech, the Park administration’s actions neatly overlapped with the malfeasance of the Sewol’s captain that served as a proximate cause of the disaster: stay where you are, don’t cause trouble, so that we may escape out of this jam first. Inspired by this overlap, dozens of demonstrations emerged across Korea to protest the government reaction. For the most part, the protesters marched silently, only holding up a sign that said: “Stay Put.”

Silent protesters march in the Sewol’s aftermath. (source)

To her credit, President Park responded strongly. She sacked the Prime Minister (who is akin to Vice President in the U.S.,) and abolished the Coast Guard, which is to be replaced with a newer and hopefully more competent agency. But Park’s numbers–which was as high as 61 percent prior to the accident–continued to sink. Her choice of new Prime Minister, Ahn Dae-hee, did not even last a week before withdrawing his nomination based on the allegations that he unethically wielded his influence as a former Supreme Court Justice to steer inordinate number of cases to his law practice.

All of this amounts to a real political consequence for the president and her conservative party. In less than a week, Korea is facing local elections where Koreans elect mayors, provincial governors, etc. What should have been a conservative landslide across the board is now up in the air, with the crown jewel of Seoul mayoralty now solidly in the hands of the current, progressive mayor Park Won-soon. Even beyond the local elections, it is likely that this disaster will be the lasting image of Park Geun-hye’s presidency. It is her Katrina moment.

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Source: Ask a Korean!