Ferry sinks off S. Korea coast....almost 300 are still missing.

May 15, 2014 8:30 PM

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Mar 2014

3885

They should just do the honorable thing already and commit seppuku. I really don't agree with the charges for manslaughter, shit happens.

May 15, 2014 8:36 PM

#52

Nvortex

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Mar 2014

1216

Glad South Korea has such a responsible and non-bureaucratic government in times of national disasters.

May 16, 2014 8:55 AM

#53

Pxi2

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May 2013

1411

RedArmyShogun said:
I remember back when Ship Captains were honourable, go down with the ships sort.

Maybe you're just romanticizing the past.

mclovinballz said:
They should just do the honorable thing already and commit seppuku. I really don't agree with the charges for manslaughter, shit happens.

As the captain he's responsible for the wellbeing of his passengers. His actions actually did cause these deaths.

Nov 12, 2014 5:54 AM

#54

Redhills

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Apr 2013

1476

Captain given 36 years prison, other crew members up to 30 years.

It's too harsh really, the event was an accident and the crew were only partly responsible. The company that illegally modified the ship to contain more cargo (cargo that caused the ship to overturn when it shifted during a sharp turn) also has a large amount of responsibility, as well as the sea rescue force of South Korea. It's not individuals who are at fault but the whole system that allowed the possibility of such tragic accidents to occur.

Koreans (many of whom want the captain to get the death penalty) seem unable to accept the truth and just want to blame someone, punish someone so that it's all "okay" again.

RedhillsNov 12, 2014 5:58 AM

Nov 12, 2014 3:54 PM

#55

listbot

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Apr 2013

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Because they are on manslaughter charges for hundreds of lives, mostly teenagers. They did caused the accident as well, in part. They most likely knew it's overloaded. And the operation was not safe.

Death penalty was initially sought but murder charges were dropped.
They were a bit unlucky but the victims and their family were even more unlucky.
There's a need for a symbolic punishment too, in order to prevent future occurrences. Just remember the students were repeatedly told to stay in their room and be calm until water rushed in.

listbotNov 12, 2014 4:00 PM

Nov 12, 2014 4:59 PM

#56

BarryManilow

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Mar 2014

2145

RedArmyShogun said:
I remember back when Ship Captains were honourable, go down with the ships sort.

Now its MUWAHAHAHA SNEAK OUT WITH THE PASSANGERS TAKE THE MONEY!

Titanic would have been such a better event/movie if its Captain was like that.

Yeah. Cast that actor as J. Jonah Jameson from the Maguire spiderman movies as the Captain too.

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Nov 12, 2014 5:37 PM

#57

Wayponpon

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Oct 2014

480

RedArmyShogun said:
I remember back when Ship Captains were honourable, go down with the ships sort.

Honour has little to do with that. The ships were generally not owned by the Captain but by a government or an organisation. If he survived the ship sinking the debts of the ship went on to him and his family. By going down with the ship his family wouldn't be tied to those debts.

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Nov 13, 2014 3:11 AM

#58

Redhills

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Apr 2013

1476

nucleon said:

There's a need for a symbolic punishment too, in order to prevent future occurrences. Just remember the students were repeatedly told to stay in their room and be calm until water rushed in.

True, it's an awful thought.

But why weren't the crew properly trained on how to deal with emergency situations?
I too would never have thought that a minor incident on a ship near the coast could kill so many people, but evidently it can unless you evacuate immediately. The crew should have known that, but didn't due to presumably inadequate training.

Such lax security measures exist in many fields and in many parts of the world, and while accidents are still unlikely, they can have drastic consequences, as the unlucky passengers and crew on the Korean ship discovered.

The punishment the crew are getting is as you say largely "symbolic" imo, and doesn't solve anything nor represent fair justice. The problem is that exactly the same incident is unlikely to occur again, so a bad accident may well occur in a different sector (remember eg. the nuclear disaster in Japan; what allowed that to happen?).

Nov 13, 2014 8:04 AM

#59

ErwinJA

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Dec 2007

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HiNT74 said:

The punishment the crew are getting is as you say largely "symbolic" imo, and doesn't solve anything nor represent fair justice. The problem is that exactly the same incident is unlikely to occur again, so a bad accident may well occur in a different sector (remember eg. the nuclear disaster in Japan; what allowed that to happen?).

The symbolic part was the murder charges and the prosecution seeking the death penalty. The actual convictions are completely in line with the responsibilities conferred on the crew of any kind of passenger vessel (cars, trains, and planes included). They had a duty of care to look out for the lives of their passengers, and not only did they only care about saving themselves, they gave instructions that directly led to the massive loss of life. Training is irrelevant - they were the first to evacuate and did so while many passengers were still unaware an evacuation was necessary. They didn't even try to deal with the situation.

The captain was convicted of "gross negligence resulting in loss of life." Nothing symbolic there. He failed to do his duty and people died as a direct result of that, and he can get a nice long prison sentence for it. The 30-year sentence was for a crewman who abandoned injured people - which counts as a lower murder charge due to his duty of care. The others all got it for criminal negligence. Beyond the one guy, no murder or manslaughter charges stuck.
For the record, people who were not on board the ferry have also been charged with the safety violations that led to the sinking. No crew member has been convicted over said violations - everything was their conduct after it hit the fan.

As for your last example, that's rather weak: the Fukushima disaster was the result of overreliance on scientific estimates which were proven wrong. They were, however, completely safe according to what was believed, and actually held up better than expected given the situation. The plants were designed to withstand an 8.0 earthquake from the same fault line, as scientific experts had surmised that it could not produce a quake significantly exceeding that. Instead, they got a 9.0, which is 10 times as powerful. That's what happens when you mistake scientific estimates for incontrovertible fact (catastrophic AGW anyone?).

ErwinJANov 13, 2014 8:07 AM

Nov 13, 2014 9:34 AM

#60

listbot

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Some Koreans did criticize their own people's lack of safety concept

Training? One younger new staff stayed to help but she died.
The ones got sued were not just for giving up responsibility.
They knew the ship was overloaded but still allowed it to operate.
They instructed passengers in a way which cause them to be trapped and get killed, while they themselves left first.

>The problem is that exactly the same incident is unlikely to occur again
Forget about Japan. Korea had news of disaster with mismanagement.
Look back 10 years ago, the Daegu subway fire. Passengers were again told to stay inside the train when there was a fire. When the operator decided to tell the people to go, he ran away himself but locked the train door.

Nov 13, 2014 10:39 AM

#61

Redhills

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Apr 2013

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ErwinJA said:

(...)

As for your last example, that's rather weak: the Fukushima disaster was the result of overreliance on scientific estimates which were proven wrong. They were, however, completely safe according to what was believed, and actually held up better than expected given the situation. The plants were designed to withstand an 8.0 earthquake from the same fault line, as scientific experts had surmised that it could not produce a quake significantly exceeding that. Instead, they got a 9.0, which is 10 times as powerful. That's what happens when you mistake scientific estimates for incontrovertible fact (catastrophic AGW anyone?).

Well I don't know, a quick look at the Wikipedia article told me that a lot of what led to the disaster was widespread corruption and lax procedures, which reminds me a lot of the Korean ship company illegally modifying its ships and bypassing safety controls.

If it's not the best example you can look at others like the 1995 Sampoong Department Store collapse, or the more recent similar collapse in Bangladesh...

You seem to assume the captain was acting selfishly -- maybe he was just scared, didn't know how to handle the situation, didn't realize the gravity of the situation, and was himself in a part of the ship where he was in imminent danger, unlike other passengers?

All in all the sentences seem harsh. The crew should have acted differently, but their mistakes were unintentional.

Nov 13, 2014 2:53 PM

#62

NTAD

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Feb 2013

6827

Oh, an update bump.

I can't be the only person who saw the thread title and thought "Damn, another one?"

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Nov 13, 2014 2:56 PM

#63

PriestSlayer

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Dec 2013

6607

Damn...

FragOutFire said:

Why am I a Berserk fan? All I ever experience is pain.

We are in the eclipse and Miura has sacrificed us

Nov 13, 2014 5:10 PM

#64

ErwinJA

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2698

HiNT74 said:
You seem to assume the captain was acting selfishly -- maybe he was just scared, didn't know how to handle the situation, didn't realize the gravity of the situation, and was himself in a part of the ship where he was in imminent danger, unlike other passengers?

All in all the sentences seem harsh. The crew should have acted differently, but their mistakes were unintentional.

You seem to assume he wasn't acting selfishly. There was a trial and he was convicted of misconduct. If he'd been railroaded, they'd have stuck him with several hundred manslaughter charges, which would have been plenty to keep him locked up indefinitely.

I see detractors of the criminal penalties keep going back to the whole "poorly trained" line. But, you don't know the exact amount and type of training they had, which is certainly not zero. And even if it was, that's not an excuse. A teacher that leads kids up to the roof during a tornado would not get off by claiming "poor training." Same for a hotel manager that ushers people into elevators during a fire. There are things you don't need training to know. Letting people know their ship is sinking so they can evacuate is definitely one of them. There is no such thing as a situation where the entire crew feels threatened enough to bail and the passengers are in no danger.

And, for the record, several other captains have suffered criminal charges for eerily similar circumstances (many passengers survived only because they ignored calls to return to their cabins). Incidentally, those people were almost certainly given disaster training, yet made most of the same "mistakes."

NTAD said:
Oh, an update bump.

I can't be the only person who saw the thread title and thought "Damn, another one?"

Naah. My first thought was "wait, wasn't this old news six months ago?"

ErwinJANov 13, 2014 5:13 PM

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Ferry sinks off S. Korea coast....almost 300 are still missing.

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