 |
| The capsized South Korean ferry |
GWANGJU, South Korea — Prosecutors on Monday demanded the death penalty for the captain of the South Korean ferry that sank in April, killing 304 people in the country’s worst peacetime disaster in decades.
The 69-year-old captain, Lee Jun-seok, “did nothing to help rescue his passengers,” said Park Jae-eok, the chief prosecutor, during a court hearing in this city in southwestern South Korea. “Even after he himself was rescued by the coast guard, he did nothing to help the passengers. He even hid his identity from the coast guard.”
Prosecutors demanded life imprisonment for three other crewmen: the first mate, Kang Won-sik; the second mate, Kim Young-ho; and the chief engineer, Park Gi-ho. They called for 15 to 30 years for 11 other crew members.
In their final argument before a court verdict expected sometime next month, the prosecutors said that the 15 crew members of the 6,825-ton ferry Sewol knew that their ship was sinking and that the passengers were waiting inside the ship after repeated instructions for them to stay put. Still, the crew members did not take any of the steps they could have easily taken, such as activating the emergency evacuation alarm bells, before they themselves fled the ship to get onto the first coast guard boats arriving at the scene, the prosecutors said.
“They only cared about their own lives,” one of the prosecutors said before a courtroom packed with 60 family members of the victims.
The Sewol sank off southwestern South Korea on April 16. It was carrying twice as much cargo as legally allowed, and much of the cargo was poorly secured, prosecutors said.
When the crew members, dressed in pea-green jail uniforms, entered the courtroom and bowed toward the family members, some of the victims’ relatives showed their hostility by making a low hissing sound.
