The Sewol Ferry Disaster

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – The Sewol Ferry Disaster

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Date: April 16, 2026
Episode Theme:
On the 12th anniversary of the Sewol Ferry Disaster, Josh and Chuck deliver an in-depth exploration of the tragedy that claimed 304 lives in South Korea, focusing on the human and systemic failures that led to and followed the disaster. The episode examines the events of April 16, 2014, the aftermath for families, government and societal responses, and the far-reaching impact on South Korea.

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Main Theme and Purpose

The episode seeks to dissect one of the most devastating maritime disasters in South Korea's history—the sinking of the Sewol ferry. Through storytelling and analysis, Josh and Chuck recount not just the sequence of events, but also the underlying causes, mismanagement, and collective trauma that ensued. They draw broader lessons about accountability, governance, and the enduring struggle of the victims’ families for truth and justice.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Disaster and Its Context

• The Sewol Ferry sank on April 16, 2014, claiming 304 lives, including 250 11th-grade students from Danwon High School on a class trip.
• The ferry route: From Incheon to Jeju Island, South Korea’s "tropical resort island."
• Released on the 12th anniversary—this event has become a national touchstone, often referred to in Korea as "416," paralleling how "9/11" is used in the US.
  • "[The Sewol disaster] had such an enormous impact on South Korean society...A public survey said it was a close second behind the Korean War for most important historical events in Korea." — Jerry [04:06]

2. The Timeline of the Disaster

• The ferry departed after delay due to heavy fog; it was the only commercial vessel to leave port that night.
• The ship was overloaded by about 1,000 tons, nearly 50% over the safe limit, carrying construction materials, cars and trucks.
• The disaster began when an inexperienced third mate, on an understaffed bridge, ordered a sudden sharp turn at 8:45am, causing the unsecured cargo to shift and the ship to list.
  • "The third mate ordered the quartermaster...to make a sudden turn...there was a horrible crashing sound and all of a sudden it tilted." — Jerry [09:30]
• Most passengers, following repeated announcements, remained in their cabins (per protocol) rather than evacuating, which proved fatal as the situation quickly worsened.
  • "The guidance was stay where you are, put on your life vest and stay in your cabin...they repeatedly, I think seven different times...said, stay in your cabins and remain calm." — Josh [13:58]

3. Failures in Rescue and Command

• Civilian fishing boats were first on the scene, rescuing the majority of the survivors, long before the Coast Guard arrived nearly 50 minutes after the initial distress call.
  • "Half of the survivors were rescued by civilian fishing boats in a 10 minute span before the Coast Guard even showed up." — Jerry [16:44]
• The Coast Guard prioritized the crew’s evacuation, including the captain who left in his underwear, without issuing an evacuation order for passengers.
  • "It's the worst thing a boat captain can do. They're supposed to be the last person off. And this guy was one of the first people off in his underwear." — Josh [18:12]
• Only one of the ship’s 44 life rafts was deployed automatically.

4. Real-time Documentation and Public Trauma

• Students’ text messages and videos from inside the ship captured their confusion and gradual realization of impending doom.
  • "Is this one of those things where the only people who survive are the ones who don't follow orders?...within an hour they would all be dead." — Jerry [13:10]
• The sinking was broadcast live across South Korea; misinformation and false hope were given to families through official channels, compounding their trauma.
  • "There was a lot of misinformation...families...had hope and assurance their kids were safe...and very quickly they learned...250 of them were now dead." — Jerry [23:25]

5. Accountability and Institutional Failure

• Multiple categories of blame:
  1. Captain and Crew: Unqualified responses, no evacuation order.
  2. Coast Guard: Delayed, ineffective response; eventually disbanded due to gross negligence.
  3. Ferry Company: Profit over safety, illegal modifications, removal of ballast for added cargo.
  4. Port Inspectors: Negligent, superficial safety checks (only "eyeballing" the ship).
  5. South Korean Government: Defensive, slow, and hostile response to victims’ families; orchestrated surveillance and misinformation campaigns.
  • "Anybody who had a finger pointed at them, what they did was just turn and pointed at the next person...there was no accountability." — Jerry [29:30]

6. Victims’ Families and Societal Fallout

• Families became activists, organizing vigils, hunger strikes, and protests for accountability and reform.
• Government and media, rather than supporting families, targeted them with baseless accusations, seeking to discredit their activism.
  • "Not only that, the official government started...trying to dig up dirt to use against these parents of children who were killed by negligence." — Jerry [26:21]
• Families established memorials, including recreating classrooms as museums, and continue to demand answers and safety reforms.
• "Hats off to them for continuing what they're doing." — Josh [49:07]

7. Aftermath: Legal and Political Consequences

• Numerous criminal and civil actions:
  • The captain sentenced to life in prison following appeal; other crew received sentences up to 30 years.
  • Ferry company owner, Yoo Byung-eun, an evangelical leader, fled and later died by suicide; his son (CEO) imprisoned for embezzlement/homicide.
  • Multiple government officials and maritime inspectors prosecuted; Coast Guard disbanded.
  • The president at the time, Park Geun-hye, was absent during the crisis, later impeached on unrelated corruption charges, but the Sewol backlash catalyzed the political process.
• Despite all this, no single root cause of the disaster’s origin (such as the sharp turn) has been conclusively established.
  • "Here's the thing, it's been 12 years and it is not clear what caused the sinking of the Sewol ferry." — Jerry [42:52]

8. Societal Impact and Legacy

• The disaster prompted calls for regulatory reform around public safety and maritime regulation.
• Strong parallels drawn to later tragedies in Korea, such as the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush, with Sewol parents reaching out to support affected families.
• Legacy of cynicism toward officialdom, but also a lasting movement for accountability and civic engagement.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "[The thing that really burns me up about this one is] it wasn't an iceberg or a bad storm. It was all sort of human caused. And even once this thing started...there was still plenty of time to rescue everyone. And it just didn't happen."
  — Josh [03:44]

• "It was just totally senseless. There was no need for it. Like it could have been totally avoided."
  — Jerry [04:06]

• "[Civilian boats] rescued half the survivors...before the Coast Guard even showed up."
  — Jerry [16:44]

• "It's the worst thing a boat captain can do. They're supposed to be the last person off. And this guy was one of the first people off in his underwear."
  — Josh [18:12]

• "The government spent a lot of money and effort to deflect the focus, attention and blame from itself...and discredit the parents...It's the most cynical, evil thing you could possibly do as a government in a situation like this."
  — Jerry [26:21]

• "Here's the thing, it's been 12 years and it is not clear what caused the sinking of the Sewol ferry."
  — Jerry [42:52]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:17] Introduction to the Sewol Ferry Disaster
• [03:31] Human toll and the impact on Korea
• [06:38] The trip’s details, ferry’s unsafe conditions
• [09:30] The critical sharp turn and immediate disaster
• [13:58] How safety protocols and ship announcements doomed passengers
• [16:44] Rescue efforts: civilians vs. Coast Guard
• [18:12] Crew and captain evacuation—dereliction of duty
• [23:25] Trauma for families, misinformation, and political response
• [26:21] Government vilifies grieving families
• [29:30] Systemic failures: five buckets of blame
• [34:16] Trials, sentences, and continuing search for root cause
• [39:08] South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye disappears during the crisis
• [42:52] Unanswered questions, unresolved mystery of cause
• [47:44] Memorials and families’ ongoing activism
• [48:42] Broader legacy, later crowd crush disaster, and regulatory reform

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Further Suggested Resources

• In the Absence – A 30-minute documentary (produced by Laura Poitras, available from The New Yorker) recommended as a real-time companion to the episode.
  • "Go watch 'In the Absence,' that New Yorker documentary...it's really something." — Jerry [49:28]

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This episode provides a sobering but essential look at how disaster is rarely an “accident” but often the inevitable result of compounding human, institutional, and systemic failures, and how the fight for truth and accountability may become a generational struggle.

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Jerry]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff youf Should Know, part of our ongoing marine disaster suite, I guess.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I'm glad we took a break. It's good to be back. Yeah, it's a very sad, I mean, just sort of devastating topic today, as they usually are. This one's especially sad, I think, because it's more recent and involved kids. But yeah, we were on a run there for a while and we, we took a break and now we're back with more maritime disaster.

[Jerry]

Yeah. In the Ourang Medan. Short stuff. You're like, this is it for a while, man.

[Josh Clark]

I think I did. I had to say, can we stop? Can we stop with these?

[Jerry]

Yeah. So, yeah, the Sewol disaster is what we're talking about. Sewol was the name of a ferry that went between the southern tip of South Korea and Jeju, kind of a tropical island resort or resort island off of Korea. And in 2014, on April 16, actually we're releasing this. On the 12th anniversary of this tragedy, 304 people died, including 250 11th grade high school students who were on a class field trip.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Eleven of their teachers. Very sadly, one of the teachers who survived took his life two days after this disaster with, you know, a case of sort of survivor's guilt.

[Jerry]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it was very. The one that really, the thing that really burns me up about this one is, you know, it wasn't an iceberg or a bad storm. It was all sort of human caused. And even once this thing started listing and tilting to the side, there was still plenty of time to rescue everyone. And it just didn't happen.

[Jerry]

Right. It's like Oprah should walk up and be like, you're to blame. You're to blame and you're to blame. Like everyone was to blame except for the people who died, essentially. There's like, it was just totally senseless. There was no need for it. Like, it could have been totally avoided. And this had such an enormous impact on South Korean society. They call it 416 because it happened on April 16, much the same way we call September 11, 9, 11 in the United States. And there was a public survey that was done, I think by Pew, that said, like, what are the most important historical events in the history of Korea? And the Seoul disaster was a close second behind the Korean War.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

That's how important and how huge of a sweeping impact this had on the entire society.

[Josh Clark]

You know what? Emily's dad calls 9 11.

[Jerry]

What?

[Josh Clark]

911.

[Jerry]

For real?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

Is he being facetious?

[Josh Clark]

No, that's just how Rick. That's how Rick rolls. He's got his own language.

[Jerry]

Does he. If he breaks his legs, does he shout, call 9 11?

[Josh Clark]

I'm not sure. All right, that's probably the last joke I'll tell. Want to go ahead and get one in there?

[Jerry]

Okay. Thank you.

[Josh Clark]

So let's start the story here. Don Juan High School is that's D A N W O N. Not Don Juan, like Don Juan DeMarco. It is a public school. It's about an hour and a half outside of Seoul. It's in a city called Ansan. And this is, like you mentioned, a class trip. This is sort of an annual tradition where the 11th graders go on this trip to this gorgeous island, which is also a UNESCO heritage site. And I think we're gonna be doing an episode on that pretty soon, right? UNESCO?

[Jerry]

Yep, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

And the whole idea is that they go before they have to sort of buckle down and get ready for their version of their. Of the sat, the csat, which is what they have in Korea. So they go for this great trip every year, Sort of a last hurrah before they start their senior year. And that's what they set off for on the night of April 15, 2014.

[Jerry]

Yeah. Also, we need to do at least a short stuff on the cset. They call it the Sun Yung, which is. It makes the SAT look like a walk in the park.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Really?

[Jerry]

It's insane. I saw one question from it. It was like, I don't know anyone who could answer this question.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Jerry]

Yeah, it'll be an interesting one. So they embarked for Jeju from Incheon, like I was saying. And it was going to be an overnight journey. I think it's a 13 hour ferry trip to Jeju. And there was a really heavy fog. So much so that the teachers on the trip considered like just canceling just seemed that dangerous. And finally everyone agreed, including the crew of the Sewall and the teachers, that. Let's just go ahead. Two and a half hours later, they finally set sail. But they were the only commercial vessel to leave port that night because that fog was so bad.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And as you'll see, that was. I guess we'll go ahead and list that as number one of ways that this disaster could have been averted. A, these kids not going at all. But B, they, you know, they were trying to go Faster because they got a later start. And that seems like it affected the disaster.

[Jerry]

Yeah, for sure. The Sewol had also been around for 20 years. It had served 20 years as a Japanese ferry off Okinawa called the Naminui, which is a Shinto shrine in Okinawa that looks over the sea and gives blessings for safe trips to the ships going in and out of of port. And the ferry, which was the Naminui, was purchased and rechristened the Sual by Chonghai Jin Marine, which is the company that owned the ferry. And two things. To increase profits, they expanded passenger decks to add basically two more passenger decks, they expanded the cargo area, and they essentially made this ship port ripe for overloading. Yeah, that's number one. Number two, the Korean government had recently extended the life of ferry ships from 20 years to 30. The reason it got retired in Okinawa is because it's just sensible to only let them go for 20 years. In Korea, South Korea, you could run them for 30 years. Which is why Chung Haijin Marine bought that ship and put it into service.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I bet they got a pretty good deal on it at that age, you know?

[Jerry]

Yeah, I'm sure the Okinawans were like, you sure you want this? And they were like, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So there were 476 total passengers on board, but there was also, like you said, it was ripe for overloading. And that's what they did. They had more than 2,100 tons of freight on board. There were construction materials. There were cars and trucks. When you see video from sort of inside this thing while it was pitching and tilting, you see like huge work trucks, like, being slammed against the wall and into other cars and things like that. In the end, it was about 1,000 tons over what its maximum capacity was supposed to be.

[Jerry]

So like about almost 50% over maximum capacity. That's just insane. And we'll explain how they got away with that eventually. So like you said, they were trying to make up for lost time, so they sailed faster than they normally would have to make it to Jeju on their scheduled time. Remember, they left two and a half hours late. The third mate was on the bridge in charge earlier that morning. Yeah, it's not entirely inappropriate. This was like open sea. It should have been basically a nothing stretch. But the point is that the captain, the first mate, and the second mate were not on the bridge. The third mate was in charge and. And the third mate ordered the quartermaster at about 8:45am to make a sudden turn. I don't remember if it's port or starboard. And when the ship made the turn, it turned really hard and there was a horrible crashing sound and all of a sudden it tilted. It listed in the water and I think something like 20 degrees to start.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So that's, that's a bad start. It did not right itself because what had happened was, you know, a lot of that stuff down there wasn't secured like it should have been. And when I said, you know, trucks went slamming against the walls and into other cars, that's what happened. All this heavy stuff shifted in such a way that it would not shift back.

[Jerry]

Right, exactly. So not only was it not going to right itself, it was going to just keep listing and listing and listing and that's exactly what happened. There is a short documentary I saw. It was produced by Laura Poitras, which. That's quality stuff. She did the, the. Essentially the film for the Snowden files in Citizen 4, the documentary. Anyway, you can find it on YouTube. I think new Yorker bought it. It's called in the Absence and it is this almost in real time, like 20 plus minute documentary that shows the ship sinking.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

And then against it puts the, like the conversations between all the people who are supposed to be rescuing this and doing something about this and just puts on full display, oh man, the incompetence, the indifference, the arrogance, just the negligence. All of the inces, all the bad inces are just on full display. It's so shocking to hear this and see it and know what happened and know who's inside there and then to hear what they actually did or didn't do to. To. To rescue them.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like, like tied to the minute. So you'll see, you know, toward the end of this documentary, it's a hard watch, but it's well, well worth checking out. You'll see like 95% of this boat is underwater and sunk with all these people on board. And you'll hear in real time, like at that exact moment in time, you know, the Coast Guard saying, like, you think we can land a helicopter on this thing now and try and get some of these people out and other people that are there. Like, I think. I don't think we can land a helicopter on it anymore. And it's like it's gone basically at that point. It's just, it's infuriating to watch, you know.

[Jerry]

Yeah. Even after that, the guy who's like, oh, that's a shame that we can't land the helicopter. That would look really good for the news cameras.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jerry]

It's just disgusting. Right? So the, the kids on board, they all had smartphones. 2014 in South Korea. Every single one of them had a smartphone. And there are a lot of surviving documents and texts from the kids on board.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

So we know a lot of what happened in the first, like, I think all the way up for like almost an hour and a half after the ship listed what was going on. And at first the kids were fairly calm. 20 degree list is substantial, but it's not panic time necessarily for everybody. It feels like people are still in charge. Things are okay. But there's conversations between the kids that are like, is this one of those things where the only people who survive are the ones who don't follow orders? You know, like, yeah. And they're joking about how the ship is sinking and all that. And little did they know that within an hour they would all be dead, essentially from the ship actually sinking and from just the terrible guidance or lack of guidance from the people who were in charge.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, the guidance was stay where you are, put on your life vest and stay in your cabin. There was silence for a little while. And then when they came over the loudspeaker, they repeatedly, I think seven different times as this thing was sinking, they were like, stay in your cabins, Stay in your cabins and remain calm. Parents were calling, or students were calling their parents from their phones. There was that brutal interview with the one parent. It was a couple. But the mom was like, her one regret was she didn't say, like, stop following their instructions, get out while you can. But as you know, I just hated that because as a parent, you aren't there. You don't know what's exactly happening, although it was played out in real time on the news. So you think that the people that are supposed to be doing the right thing are doing the right thing. So you want to tell your kid, like, hey, listen to what they're telling you. And not like, hey, don't listen to what they're saying. Get out of there.

[Jerry]

Yeah, go jump off the side of the ship.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

You know? Yeah, you can totally understand where she's coming from. But I can also understand that that's her greatest regret.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, God, I hated it for her to all these years later to still feel that way, you know?

[Jerry]

Yeah. So 8:55am, 10 minutes after the ship turned and started to list, the Sewall crew makes their first distress call. Three minutes earlier, the very first distress call from the Sewol was made by one of the students. Yeah, they called 119, which is 911 in Korea. And they said like, hey, I'm on a sinking ship, please send some help. And at first you could tell the 119 operators, like, wait, what are you saying?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jerry]

Because they were essentially like, so wait, you're on a ship, you're seeing a ship that's sinking. And the guy's like, no, I'm on a sinking ship. Like, please send help. This was three minutes before the crew ever did anything, like, did anything about this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, so they were ahead by three minutes. Over the next half hour, there were a lot of calls from the crew to all kinds of people, Coast Guard support. Obviously they called the crew was like, hey, we're trapped on the bridge. We don't know what's going on with the passengers. The ship is definitely sinking. So there was no ambiguity about what was going on. And they said to the Coast Guard, like, should we evacuate? And they said, hey, it's a captain's decision. That's why you have a captain on board, basically. And that was over the next half hour from those initial calls. In the middle of this, at 9:14, they made the crew made distress calls to local fishing boats like, hey, anybody that's near us, we need help, like right now. And a lot of them showed up.

[Jerry]

Yeah, I think there were some that had already showed up even before the call. And half of the people who were rescued who survived the sinking of the Siouwal ferry were rescued by civilian fishing boats. In 10 minutes, a 10 minute span, half of the survivors were rescued. This was 2030. I saw as much as 40 minutes, although I don't think that's right before the Coast Guard even showed up. These fishing boats were there rescuing people. The first Coast Guard boat, and I think the only Coast Guard boat bear that in mind, showed up at 9:35. So this is 50 minutes after the first the turn and what, 40 minutes after the call for help, the Coast Guard finally shows up. The ship is at 60 degrees now. Yeah, this is, that's nuts. You're like standing on the wall essentially. And the Coast Guard did what the Coast Guard is supposed to do. The crew did what they were supposed to do. The Coast Guard evacuated the crew from the bridge and got away from the ship. The crew left the ship, including the captain, who there's a very clear image of him being assisted off of the bridge and onto the Coast Guard boat, who had not, very importantly, given the order to evacuate the ship. He abandoned ship and did not explain to the passengers that they needed to get off of the ship.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's the worst thing a boat captain can do. They're supposed to be the last person off. And this guy was one of the first people off in his underwear. You said the crew all got off. It wasn't everybody. I think there were 14 crew members that were rescued at 9:47am A few crew members to their credit went down with the ship and were doing everything they could. So they were. There were some heroic actions going on. A helicopter shows up around this time, starts to rescue passengers. But again, a helicopter rescue. They're getting people off like one at a time, lifting them to safety. And these kids are still being told to stay in their room. So it's not like everyone was on top of the deck or wherever they could be seen. Most of them are still in their room. And then they had life rafts. They had life rafts for like 1,100 people. There were 44 life rafts, could carry 25 people each, and only one of them was automatically deployed.

[Jerry]

Right. So there is a point where the water is starting to rush in so much that even somebody who's been raised their entire life in a collectivist society to just follow, you know, the orders of the people in charge are going to leave their cabin, are going to stop listening and leave their cabin. That finally happened, but by this time, it was much too late for most of them. It's very, very hard to get out of a sinking ship because the water rushes into every area that has air to fill it up. There's a suction mechanism that can create the movement of the water, makes it less dense. So you are likelier to sink. It's very hard to get out of the inside of a sinking large ship. And so there were stories of some of the survivors seeing their friends, like trying to get out and then see them just get sucked back into the. The ship in the water. And that was. That was it. So the, the Sioux wall, within just a couple hours, Chuck, it went from completely above water to totally sunk, totally submerged. And there were still 304 people trapped inside when it sank.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that single Coast Guard boat rescue boat that was there, it sat there and watched the whole thing happen. In fact, worse than that, those fishermen and the fishing boats that were there pulling passengers out, the Coast Guard ordered them to retreat and to get out of there. Of those 476, I think you said, 304 were trapped inside. Only three of those were crew members. And they were young crew members who stayed aboard to try and help.

[Jerry]

Yeah, two of them were an Engaged couple.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. All right, we're getting pretty worked up and upset, so maybe we should take a break and come back after this with more on the disaster.

[Jerry]

Okay, we will do that. Stop. You should know.

[Josh Clark]

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[Jerry]

Yeah, so it's no wonder millions of business owners rely on Spectrum Business to keep them connected. Visit spectrum.combusiness to learn more. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas. I think you Said earlier, Chuck, we're back, by the way, that the, the sinking was broadcast on tv. Essentially all of the news just covered it constantly the entire day and then some. And there was a lot of misinformation that was coming out. You can actually hear where it began, like very early on with the ship almost fully capsized and mostly sunk. One of the Coast Guard guys says, yeah, everybody's safe. They're all, they're all evacuated. So the families who were watching this essentially had hope and assurance that their kids were safe, they were alive as the ship was sinking. And very quickly they learned that, no, this is not the case, that a substantial number, 250 of them were now dead, or now maybe even not dead, but trapped at the bottom of the Yellow Sea in a boat and were going to die.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, 75 of the students made it through. So the families, you know, almost immediately were like, we need to hold someone accountable. We need some answers for what happened out there. And they never really got answers. So when that happened, they, they really went hard into raising good trouble, becoming activists. Basically. They had candlelight vigils. They drew together thousands of people at these things. They camped outside of the President's residence, which is the Blue House in South Korea. A lot of them shaved their heads for publicity. They went on hunger strikes. They were going to marches and speaking at rallies. And because of this and this thing just seems like it keeps getting worse and worse and worse.

[Jerry]

It does.

[Josh Clark]

South Korea didn't say, like, yeah, we need to really get to the bottom of this. All these parents are devastated. They lost their children, so let's get to the bottom of it. Instead, these right wing websites started putting out and commentators start putting out stories about kind of what happened in Newtown, Connecticut, like putting out stories about the families, like accusing them of being North Korean agents trying to get rich off this tragedy. Not only that, the official government started trailing some of them, started staking out their houses, started tapping phones, trying to dig up dirt to use against these parents of children who were killed by negligence.

[Jerry]

They went to great lengths and spent a lot of money and effort to deflect the focus, attention and blame from itself the government and discredit the parents onto whoever. Yes. On the parents. It's the most cynical, evil thing you could possibly do as a government in a situation like this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

When you're largely to blame. And so the, the, these families didn't stop as, as they were vilified. They were. There was like a huge cleaving between the formerly fully sympathetic and on Their side public and these families. Because now all of a sudden it's like, well, wait a minute, are they trying to get rich? And the media was fully culpable in this. They were instrumentalized. I've seen it described by the government went along fully. And so whatever the government wanted them to say, they would just have some prosecutors, have some journalists hang out on the record, feed them a bunch of stuff and then the next thing that would be the new news cycle. So the government was really able to deliberately manage all of this, this tragedy. And one of the things they did was scapegoat the families or get them ostracized at least. And the families did not. This didn't shut them up at all. If anything, it created even more activists and deepen the activists activism in the ones that were already kind of radicalized by this. And so over time it became clear that there was a bunch of people to blame and the parents were not in any of the categories.

[Josh Clark]

No, there's basically kind of five buckets of people who failed here. Obviously the captain and the crew, except for the three that stayed behind who were, you know, commendable, obviously. But you know, they, like we said, they didn't evacuate anybody. No announcements to evacuate. Everyone was told to stay there while this thing sank. And the other thing too was not having that cargo secured. You know, you shouldn't have cars and trucks sliding around and construction equipment sliding around when you make a sharp turn. And making that sharp turn was also a big error.

[Jerry]

The Coast Guard also was very, I don't think they were ever off the hook. They were blamed from the moment the whole thing happened to the today. Yeah, they did not do almost anything. It's just astounding the little that they did.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I don't get like why? Why?

[Jerry]

I don't know why. But I do know that as a direct result of this, the, the Coast Guard, the North Korean Coast Guard was dissolved. Everybody got removed, like, sorry, there's no Coast Guard anymore. We're going to have to figure out a different way to do this. That's how incompetent and negligent their response was that the Coast Guard was disbanded because of it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

So I don't know why, but that was the result. That's how bad it was.

[Josh Clark]

Well, and I think that's one of the more maddening things is even when they have done follow up with all this, I don't think anyone ever said like, well, there was a communication breakdown here and it happened because of this. It Was. And when you're listening to the comms in real time, it's just. It's infuriating.

[Jerry]

Oh. It was like anybody who had a finger pointed at them, what they did was just turn and pointed at the next person.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

There was no, like, accountability. No accountability. Well put.

[Josh Clark]

The ferry company was another bucket. Obviously their profits were more important than the safety of their passengers. It was overloaded, like we said. Apparently their emergency training wasn't very robust. And the workers that they hired were apparently low paid contract workers that didn't have a lot of experience.

[Jerry]

Right. So the ferry company's cutting every corner they can to maximize profit and putting profit ahead of passenger safety by a lot of. Right. The port inspectors too, they didn't do their job. They did their job by looking at what's called freeboard, which is the distance between the ship, I guess, the main deck and the water. And they basically just eyeballed it and said, oh, it's not sitting too low in the water. So I guess it passes inspection. From what I understand, they did not go aboard the ship and actually like visually see any of the cargo. That was the inspection they did for a passenger ferry. And it gets even worse because you might say, like, okay, well, I mean, it was like, it wasn't too low in the water. Who cares if it was overloaded? The reason it wasn't too, too far or too deep into the water was because the ferry company had scuttled ballast to use that, that weight for more cargo. And not only did that, was that just highly illegal, but the lack of ballast made the ship less seaworthy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it made it very unstable. So something like a hard turn, all of a sudden you're going down, you know.

[Jerry]

Isn't that insane?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's crazy. The South Korean government is the fifth bucket because as you'll see here coming up in the next section, they had a terrible response to everything after it happened. There were about. I guess it's been about 12 years since this happened. Like you said, I guess it's gonna be on the anniversary that this is released. But there have been nine different government investigations and inquiries. And we'll go over the litany of arrests. I mean, that's the only sort of. I mean, you don't want to call it a good thing, but at least a lot of people served time for this, you know?

[Jerry]

Yeah, they definitely did. One of them was the captain. His name is Lee Jun Seok, and he was put on trial for negligent homicide. His defense was that he was stunned and confused by the accident. And he wasn't able to make decisions because he was so stunned and confused. That was his defense.

[Josh Clark]

That's not what you want to hear out of a captain.

[Jerry]

No, for sure. I guess he also gave conflicting testimony. In one, he lied and said that, oh, he did give the order to evacuate, but his crew didn't listen. I think he even lied and said that he used a bullhorn to tell everyone to evacuate. He definitely did not do any of those.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

Later, he gave a somewhat more rational and sensible explanation. He said that essentially there's very strong currents in this area. That's true. The water is very cold. It was like 57 degrees Fahrenheit or I think, 17 degrees Celsius. I don't remember. Pretty cold. And that also he didn't want people jumping in the water before there was anyone around to rescue them. Right. All of that makes a little bit of sense, but none of it justifies or excuses or explains never giving the evacuation order, abandoning ship while it was still fully loaded with passengers. Like, there is no way to defend his actions, even if some of his thinking was potentially reasonable.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He said that he didn't know. He claimed to not know the status of the passengers when he abandoned ship, which, in admission, you know, in and of itself is awful. And he went to trial. Of course, we're gonna talk about a lot of the trials here at the end. But his trial was the most sort of cause, you know, it was on tv, the captain coming out in his underwear and getting on that. It was just laid bare, like, you know, in all ways for everyone to see with their own eyeballs. So that was the trial that was really sort of the most striking publicly, I think. And he was sentenced to 36 years in prison. Fourteen members of the crew, the 14 that evacuated, they got sentenced as well, from five to 30 years. But they appealed the verdict and made it worse. He eventually got a life sentence out of this. And some of the crew members had their sentences dialed back a little bit because they were acting on captain's orders.

[Jerry]

Right. A lot of the families were like, let's give them the death penalty. Even though South Korea hadn't used the death penalty since 1997, they believed that this was a prime candidate for the death penalty. So early on, Chuck, really early on, as the government's just doing anything it can to deflect blame or responsibility, they zeroed in on one of the owners of Cheonghaejin Marine, which owned the ferry. He was a billionaire named Yoo Byung eun, he was 73. His family was the co owner of the company and also a bunch of other companies. And the government did the same thing that it later did with the families. It basically started feeding secretly info to the media. And the media turned around and reported on it. And all of a sudden I saw this graph of, you know, day by day, news reports on the Seawall ferry sinking. They start to go down as the reports on Yoo Byung SEO Un go up until there's nothing almost on the sinking and everything on this billionaire who's now fled and is on the run.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So he goes on the lam. He's a very well known guy in South Korea at the time, even before this, mainly because, well, I mean, he was a billionaire businessman, so that's one. But more so for being the founder of the Evangelical Baptist Church in Korea. So he's someone that's well known. They issue an arrest warrant. About a month later, he had fled. By this point, there's a nationwide manhunt. And for many, many months, what we learned after the fact was he was hiding in a panic room at his vacation house. And then that summer in July, they found him in the woods. Basically he was in a plum orchard, had killed himself. His body was badly decomposed at that point. So he, you know, the most cowardly thing he could do, he fled, hid, and then took his own life to avoid responsibility.

[Jerry]

Yeah, there's something. I mean, even though he was very much made a scapegoat by the government, that doesn't mean he was innocent or not responsible. He just wasn't the only one responsible. And then one other thing that makes this whole government thing even more cynical. They found his body a full month before they publicly acknowledged it. Yeah, because they kept. He was just such a great way to distract the public from the actual problem, the tragedy. And when they finally did release that they had found him and the manhunt was over, it was because there was a really unpopular bill that would allow hospitals to make more profits over patient care that was making the news. So they bumped that out of the way with the news that this guy's body had been found.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Should we take our final break?

[Jerry]

I think that's a good idea.

[Josh Clark]

All right, we're going to take another break and talk a little bit more about the fallout right after this.

[Jerry]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Jerry]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Jerry]

Yeah, so it's no wonder millions of business owners rely on Spectrum Business to keep them connected. Visit spectrum.combusiness to learn more. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas.

[Josh Clark]

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[Jerry]

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[Josh Clark]

That's right. They don't build tech just for tech's sake. They build it for you. Find technology built for the way you [e-mail] DellPCS built for you. All right, so we're back. We have not talked yet about the South Korean government. You know, like we said, this thing was on TV for everyone to kind of see. The one thing they didn't see was their president Park Geun Hee was nowhere. She didn't emerge. There was about a seven hour period where she didn't come out of her residence to address anything going on. When she finally did come out, she didn't seem like she was even briefed on what was going on. She was getting a lot of the basic facts of the disaster wrong. She didn't understand that there were students trapped inside the boat. It was a real mess from the beginning. And they still don't know. I believe they sealed the national security documents that have, you know, what she was doing during those seven hours? They sealed those documents for at least 30 years. So no one's ever going to know what the president of that country was doing for those seven hours.

[Jerry]

No, the one thing that an investigation turned up that she definitely was doing was the two hours before she finally went on TV to talk about this crisis. She was getting her hair done.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Jerry]

I remember hearing that hours before that. Like, sealed. It's the most suspicious thing I've ever heard in my life.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's so fishy. And them sealing it for 30 years just, like, puts the official fishy stamp on it all.

[Jerry]

Yeah. I mean, it's bad enough if they're just keeping it quiet, but to seal it for 30 years? What, was she, like, having sex with Satan himself or something? What was going on?

[Josh Clark]

All of a sudden, it's a South park movie, pretty.

[Jerry]

Pretty much. Oh, come on, guy.

[Josh Clark]

So obviously, the, you know, politics are politics. So the political opposition is gonna just jump on this moment and say they're behind the families. Of course, if you're on the other side of the political spectrum, they wanted her to step down. They mounted a big nationwide sort of protest, saying that she needs to get out of here. And in 2017, she became the first South Korean president to be impeached and removed from office and was convicted. But the conviction had nothing to do with this. She was implicated in a bribery scheme.

[Jerry]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But they do credit the seawall probe and the backlash against her to just sort of kicking off all of this investigatory stuff that led to that conviction.

[Jerry]

Yeah. The park family, in fact, had pretty. They were not very good at governing. Not only was she the first president to be removed from office in South Korea history, her father was a dictator who led a coup and took power until 1979, when he was assassinated. Assassinated. So not exactly the family you want running your country after all.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Her prison sentence is 20 years, but she was pardoned in 2022 by her successor. They said that, you know, she wasn't doing well health wise. And that's, you know, in most normal times, politics wise, a lot of times, even the opposition will, like, issue a pardon against the person they're against, you know?

[Jerry]

Yeah, I think it's kind of one of those, like, we need to keep that custom in order, because it could be. I've got eyes on the Oval Office four years from now, and I don't want to go to jail.

[Josh Clark]

What, you do?

[Jerry]

Yeah, might as well. I mean, same thing. So here's the thing, it's been 12 years and it is not clear what caused the sinking of the Sioux Wall ferry.

[Josh Clark]

Well, yeah, don't know like why it turned. I mean in that video, I don't know if this was the thing, but when it shows that truck slamming against the wall, something burst and water starts coming in. So yeah, yeah. What they don't know is why they made that sharp turn to begin with.

[Jerry]

Did I send this to you? I don't know if you saw it, but the third mate in charge, when she was tried, she testified that she ordered the quartermaster to turn the rudder, turn the wheel to avoid an oncoming ship that was coming very closely. I didn't see that part and like it's nowhere like you like it was. I found it buried and referenced in some one article like it's not like a big thing. I don't know why. Because it was confirmed by on land radar that there was a trail right after the ship turned going the other direction of what seemed to be another ship.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so that might have been the reason.

[Jerry]

Yes, the reason they turned. And then she said, well the quartermaster turned it way too hard. And again like you said, these were inexperienced, low paid contract workers actually doing the ship. So it's quite possible the quartermaster just turned it too hard. He also said the quartermaster in his defense said I didn't turn it that hard. That ship was not made to even turn 5 degrees like the third May ordered me to like it just kept going and skidding essentially.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You know we mentioned the crew and the captain that got and the president that all got prison sentences. The owner of that ferry company had taken his own life, but I think it was his son that was the CEO. He was convicted on accidental homicide charges, but also an embezzlement thing. So he got a seven year term for both of those. There was a shipping official that the ones who said hey, you're fine to go without checking its cargo. He was sentenced to three years. A couple of workers with a private company that overloaded the ship to begin with. They got two years, the ferry company and this one. They ended up getting a pretty good payout. There was a civil wrongful death, civil suit and in 2018 court ordered the government and the ferry company to pay the families what would be about $530,000 per victim in American dollars, which is about 600 million won.

[Jerry]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But you know, I mentioned the payout being pretty good just because they deserved it, but nothing. You know, there isn't a financial compensation for something like that. You know, no.

[Jerry]

And to their credit, they are still quite organized and still agitating for answers. We didn't say, but they actually raised the ferry and dry docked it. It's pretty astounding that they were able to get that thing out of the water, out of I think 120ft of water. And they were able to recover more bodies. They were able to recover belongings to the kids. Very important stuff. But they still are like, we have no idea what caused this, what the actual cause was.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

But they like, it took President park to be impeached before they raised that thing because she was essentially sitting on it. She didn't want it to make the news cycle again. But they're still together. They didn't just get their money and like, and say like, whatever. Another group were charged with negligence and incompetence. They were 11 Coast Guard officers that all stood trial. One of them, I think he was the commander of that one Coast Guard boat that was there on the scene. He served a four year sentence from what I saw.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. There was also the bucket of the illegal surveillance that happened, the obstruction that happened when the government was trying to deflect, you know, basically all attention on themselves. So from that bucket, six officers with the Defense Security Command, which is their military intelligence agency, were convicted of illegally surveilling the families, you know, the victim's families.

[Jerry]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then two of the President's top aides were actually acquitted of interfering with investigations. But they were, they were tried, I guess.

[Jerry]

Yeah. And like I said, the grieving, the parents that became activists, they created essentially a couple of groups that both have 416 in the name that are, that are there to essentially get the truth revealed, make sure that everyone who hasn't been punished is still punished. They also have managed to get the actual classrooms removed from the high school and reinstalled, I think at the Department of Education. And it's now a memorial museum, the 416 memorial classroom.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

And there's multiple classrooms that are just empty and they're. They redid them exactly the way that they were left when the students left to go on their field trip. And it's eerie. I saw one picture in the April 2014 wall calendar still up.

[Josh Clark]

Geez.

[Jerry]

Yeah, it looks really stirring.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That's brutal. This, sadly, was not, you know, the last disaster to strike South Korea just a few years ago in 2022 in October, 159 young people died in a crowd rush during Halloween. It's known as the Itaewon crowd crush. And they, you know, at least there were parents from the seawall disaster that came forward to get together with these parents and say, hey, you've got a friend in me and we can be together in this activism, you know, so, like, join up with us because we're already going strong. And that's what happened.

[Jerry]

Yeah. Because I guess what I left off, the main point of what they're agitating for is better government regulation for public safety responses for things like shipping requirements, like just basically repealing some of the deregulation that led to these unsafe conditions that allowed that crowd crush to happen, that allowed the seawall ferry to sink without people being enough people being rescued.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Jerry]

So, yeah, hats off to them for continuing what they're doing.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Sad. Tough, tough, tough one. I remember this going down. I remember seeing the images of that captain coming off that boat in his underwear and just thinking, like, what is this guy doing?

[Jerry]

And we talked about the Itaewon crowd crush in the crowd crush episode.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, that's right.

[Jerry]

I also just want to make sure everybody goes and watches in the absence that New Yorker documentary. It's like less than 30 minutes long and it's really something.

[Josh Clark]

Agreed.

[Jerry]

Well, Chuck said yeah. And agreed. So that means it's time for listener mail.

[Josh Clark]

This is not a sad listener mail. So we're going to end on a little brighter note. It's about deodorant. Hey, guys, I listened to the antiperspirant deodorant episode and I wanted to share this with your listenership. If you. And I guess you know Chris here isn't into standard deodorants and has some advice.

[Jerry]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

If you mix equalish parts of coconut oil with baking soda to your favorite consistency, maybe if you have a favorite essential oil desired, you can drop that in there. It's frankly the best deodorant ever. For those whose bodies laugh at anything supposed to stop that is supposed to stop sweat. Because personally, this chick thinks of hot dogs and sweats. So the capability of it completely masking body odor is remarkable. At least with my stubborn stink. And we get a cheers from Chris. And Chris has a little P.S. if you get irritated from the baking soda, maybe just add some more coconut oil until your skin doesn't complain.

[Jerry]

Nice. Thanks, Chris. That's good stuff. I do have to warn you, do not just willy nilly put a bunch of essential oil in there though. Like, I found that out the hard way when I had, I guess, poison ivy and yumi was like, just put some oil on. Some essential oil on. I don't remember. I just put essential oil on and my skin just started burning immediately. And she's like, no, you're supposed to mix it with like other oil first. I was gonna say, why didn't you say that?

[Josh Clark]

Why didn't you call Emily? But Yumi knew that. Yeah, you gotta really dilute that stuff. A little goes a long way. So I would imagine a couple of drops in your deodorant concoction would be plenty.

[Jerry]

It's like the old slogan says, a couple of drops. Drops tops. If you want to get in touch with us like Chris did, send us an email like Chris did. You can send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com

[Josh Clark]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.

[Jerry]

We're always talking about how things work, and one thing that keeps your car running smoothly is regular oil changes. But life's busy and the oil light always comes on at the worst time. Well, that's why there's Take five oil change. It doesn't just save time, it gives you control of your day back. You pull in, stay in your car. Check something off your to do list. No waiting room, no pressure. You're in and you're out in about 10 minutes. Oil changes include tire pressure checks and fluid top offs, and the friendly staff explain everything and welcome you with a free water.

[Josh Clark]

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