Visitors comfort relatives of missing passengers of the Sewol ferry at a gymnasium in Jindo, South Korea on April 21, 2014. (Jean Chung/The New York Times)
Jindo, South Korea:
As Navy divers recovered the bodies of dozens of teenagers drowned waiting for a rescue of their doomed ferry, South Korea has begun a national bout of hand-wringing over the country's tendency to overlook safety precautions in its quest for economic success.
With a mounting list of errors that appeared to have contributed to the ferry disaster, maritime experts, the press and regular citizens venting their anger on social media have begun to question what they describe as inadequate safety precautions and often lax regulation of businesses.
On Tuesday, an opposition lawmaker released data showing that the ship was carrying three times its recommended maximum cargo, though it remained unclear if that could have helped destabilize it.
In addition, President Park Geun-hye, who has been withering in her criticism of the crew, has also argued that cozy relations between regulators and shippers may have contributed to the catastrophe, one of South Korea's worst in peacetime.
South Korea's prime minister, meanwhile, cited specific problems that might have been addressed by better regulation, including suspicions that renovations to add more sleeping cabins made the ship top-heavy and more likely to keel over.
The country's top newspapers reflected the growing sense of anger, and shock, over what they suggested was a lack of proper oversight.
"Are we a safe society or a third-rate people?" read one editorial headline in the JoongAng newspaper. And the daily Dong-A newspaper ran an editorial titled "Cry Korea," in which it argued that Park should live up to her campaign promise to run an "administration of safety."
For years, South Koreans called their country "a land of disasters" after a lack of regulation or a cavalier attitude toward safety, or both, were at least partly blamed for a string of accidents.
In 1993, an Asiana Airlines jet slammed into a hill not far from the site of the ferry accident, killing 68 passengers. Later that year, an overloaded ferry sank, killing 292. In 1994, a bridge collapsed in Seoul, killing 32. In 1995, 101 died in a gas explosion, and 501 in the collapse of a department store in Seoul that was weakened after the owner violated building safety codes by adding a swimming pool at the top. Two years later, a Korean Air jet crashed in Guam, killing 228.
With no large-scale disaster reported since arson caused a subway fire that killed 192 people in 2003, South Korea appeared to have put its curse behind it - and the country appeared to have moved on from its culture of "ppali ppali," or "hurry hurry," loosely translated as a tendency to justify cutting corners to get work finished quickly.
Now, many Koreans are expressing shame at how far their country still needs to go to address safety concerns, adding to the grief and anger that has gripped the country since the accident last Wednesday.
On Tuesday, anger at the crew's apparent missteps in the evacuation - and their abandonment of the ferry, the Sewol, as it sank with scores of people trapped inside - only grew as investigators said the crew was not even the first to notify the authorities that the ship was in trouble. The first call, they said, came from a high school student who called the police.
"Save us! We're on a ship and I think it's sinking," the student is quoted as saying, according to the South Korean national news agency, Yonhap. The boy, identified only by his family name, Choi, is among the missing.
As of Tuesday night, the death toll had risen to 121, but 181 were still missing.
Analysts said the ferry accident appeared to be a reminder that South Korea did not shed its easy acceptance of loose regulatory enforcement even as it became a high-tech economic powerhouse flooding the world markets with Samsung smartphones. The culture of lax enforcement is such a given, experts say, that government officials consider working in public safety a second-rate job.
In South Korea, more than 31,000 people, including 3,000 students, die every year in accidents, accounting for 12.8 percent of the country's total annual deaths, the highest rate among major developed nations.
Those accidents include everything from car accidents to fires, and it is unclear how much can be attributed to a lack of focus on safety. But there is a general acknowledgment in hypercompetitive South Korea that success is often measured by how quickly and cheaply a job is done, and that spending too much time and resources trying to follow rules is sometimes seen as losing a competitive edge.
"The country has grown so rapidly that a lot of shortcuts have been made, so that it's waiting for an accident to happen," said Tom Coyner, a member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea and the author of "Doing Business in Korea."
Kim Chang-je, a professor of navigation science at Korea Maritime and Ocean University, said the complaints appeared to be true of the ferry business.
"We have the safety regulations and systems that were similar to global norms," he said. "But they are not properly enforced. All the problems with the South Korean ferry business have come out in the Sewol case."
He and other experts pointed out a host of issues they say undermined safety on the ferry, including that the crew included several contract workers, who might have been less familiar with the ship than a regular crew.
Investigators have also said the decision by the company that owned the ferry, Chonghaejin Marine, to add more sleeping cabins probably undermined the ship's ability to regain its balance after tilting.
The Korea Register of Shipping, an inspection agency, approved the change to the ship's design after advising Chonghaejin Marine to carry less cargo and more ballast water to compensate for the loss of stability. But on Tuesday Kim Young-rok, an opposition lawmaker, said that when the ship left Incheon, it carried 3,608 tons of cargo, three times the recommended maximum.
The company's audit data showed it has depended increasingly upon cargo to compensate for declining passenger revenues.
Prosecutors were investigating whether the Sewol did not carry enough ballast water to accommodate the extra cargo. One of the two first mates arrested on Tuesday told reporters that when he tried to right the ship after tilting, the ballast "didn't work."
Prosecutors raided Korea Register's headquarters on Tuesday and barred the head of Chonghaejin Marine, as well as the company's family owners, from leaving the country.
It has also become clear that the captain most likely violated national navigational guidelines when he left the ship in the control of the least experienced ship's mate through a waterway notorious for its rapid currents. The guidelines stipulate a captain should be in control in busy or dangerous waters.
The Sewol also had no extra captain, as ships often do when they are on long overnight voyages so the two can take turns in the bridge, experts said. The ship's main captain was on leave.
Experts say they suspect some of the problems with the ship resulted from lax execution of safety standards made possible by ties among the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, the Korea Shipping Association and shipping companies.
The shipping association is a lobby for shipping companies and is financed by them. But it is also charged with inspecting ships for safety measures, such as a proper and balanced stowage of cargo. In addition, many senior officials from the ministry - which is supposed to oversee the association's enforcement - also join the association after they retire.
"We will never be able to expect safety regulations to be properly enforced until the shipping association becomes independent," said Jung Yun-chul, another maritime safety expert at Korea Maritime and Ocean University.
With a mounting list of errors that appeared to have contributed to the ferry disaster, maritime experts, the press and regular citizens venting their anger on social media have begun to question what they describe as inadequate safety precautions and often lax regulation of businesses.
On Tuesday, an opposition lawmaker released data showing that the ship was carrying three times its recommended maximum cargo, though it remained unclear if that could have helped destabilize it.
In addition, President Park Geun-hye, who has been withering in her criticism of the crew, has also argued that cozy relations between regulators and shippers may have contributed to the catastrophe, one of South Korea's worst in peacetime.
South Korea's prime minister, meanwhile, cited specific problems that might have been addressed by better regulation, including suspicions that renovations to add more sleeping cabins made the ship top-heavy and more likely to keel over.
The country's top newspapers reflected the growing sense of anger, and shock, over what they suggested was a lack of proper oversight.
"Are we a safe society or a third-rate people?" read one editorial headline in the JoongAng newspaper. And the daily Dong-A newspaper ran an editorial titled "Cry Korea," in which it argued that Park should live up to her campaign promise to run an "administration of safety."
For years, South Koreans called their country "a land of disasters" after a lack of regulation or a cavalier attitude toward safety, or both, were at least partly blamed for a string of accidents.
In 1993, an Asiana Airlines jet slammed into a hill not far from the site of the ferry accident, killing 68 passengers. Later that year, an overloaded ferry sank, killing 292. In 1994, a bridge collapsed in Seoul, killing 32. In 1995, 101 died in a gas explosion, and 501 in the collapse of a department store in Seoul that was weakened after the owner violated building safety codes by adding a swimming pool at the top. Two years later, a Korean Air jet crashed in Guam, killing 228.
With no large-scale disaster reported since arson caused a subway fire that killed 192 people in 2003, South Korea appeared to have put its curse behind it - and the country appeared to have moved on from its culture of "ppali ppali," or "hurry hurry," loosely translated as a tendency to justify cutting corners to get work finished quickly.
Now, many Koreans are expressing shame at how far their country still needs to go to address safety concerns, adding to the grief and anger that has gripped the country since the accident last Wednesday.
On Tuesday, anger at the crew's apparent missteps in the evacuation - and their abandonment of the ferry, the Sewol, as it sank with scores of people trapped inside - only grew as investigators said the crew was not even the first to notify the authorities that the ship was in trouble. The first call, they said, came from a high school student who called the police.
"Save us! We're on a ship and I think it's sinking," the student is quoted as saying, according to the South Korean national news agency, Yonhap. The boy, identified only by his family name, Choi, is among the missing.
As of Tuesday night, the death toll had risen to 121, but 181 were still missing.
Analysts said the ferry accident appeared to be a reminder that South Korea did not shed its easy acceptance of loose regulatory enforcement even as it became a high-tech economic powerhouse flooding the world markets with Samsung smartphones. The culture of lax enforcement is such a given, experts say, that government officials consider working in public safety a second-rate job.
In South Korea, more than 31,000 people, including 3,000 students, die every year in accidents, accounting for 12.8 percent of the country's total annual deaths, the highest rate among major developed nations.
Those accidents include everything from car accidents to fires, and it is unclear how much can be attributed to a lack of focus on safety. But there is a general acknowledgment in hypercompetitive South Korea that success is often measured by how quickly and cheaply a job is done, and that spending too much time and resources trying to follow rules is sometimes seen as losing a competitive edge.
"The country has grown so rapidly that a lot of shortcuts have been made, so that it's waiting for an accident to happen," said Tom Coyner, a member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea and the author of "Doing Business in Korea."
Kim Chang-je, a professor of navigation science at Korea Maritime and Ocean University, said the complaints appeared to be true of the ferry business.
"We have the safety regulations and systems that were similar to global norms," he said. "But they are not properly enforced. All the problems with the South Korean ferry business have come out in the Sewol case."
He and other experts pointed out a host of issues they say undermined safety on the ferry, including that the crew included several contract workers, who might have been less familiar with the ship than a regular crew.
Investigators have also said the decision by the company that owned the ferry, Chonghaejin Marine, to add more sleeping cabins probably undermined the ship's ability to regain its balance after tilting.
The Korea Register of Shipping, an inspection agency, approved the change to the ship's design after advising Chonghaejin Marine to carry less cargo and more ballast water to compensate for the loss of stability. But on Tuesday Kim Young-rok, an opposition lawmaker, said that when the ship left Incheon, it carried 3,608 tons of cargo, three times the recommended maximum.
The company's audit data showed it has depended increasingly upon cargo to compensate for declining passenger revenues.
Prosecutors were investigating whether the Sewol did not carry enough ballast water to accommodate the extra cargo. One of the two first mates arrested on Tuesday told reporters that when he tried to right the ship after tilting, the ballast "didn't work."
Prosecutors raided Korea Register's headquarters on Tuesday and barred the head of Chonghaejin Marine, as well as the company's family owners, from leaving the country.
It has also become clear that the captain most likely violated national navigational guidelines when he left the ship in the control of the least experienced ship's mate through a waterway notorious for its rapid currents. The guidelines stipulate a captain should be in control in busy or dangerous waters.
The Sewol also had no extra captain, as ships often do when they are on long overnight voyages so the two can take turns in the bridge, experts said. The ship's main captain was on leave.
Experts say they suspect some of the problems with the ship resulted from lax execution of safety standards made possible by ties among the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, the Korea Shipping Association and shipping companies.
The shipping association is a lobby for shipping companies and is financed by them. But it is also charged with inspecting ships for safety measures, such as a proper and balanced stowage of cargo. In addition, many senior officials from the ministry - which is supposed to oversee the association's enforcement - also join the association after they retire.
"We will never be able to expect safety regulations to be properly enforced until the shipping association becomes independent," said Jung Yun-chul, another maritime safety expert at Korea Maritime and Ocean University.
© 2014, The New York Times News Service
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