The Sewol Ferry Disaster

In 2014 a ferry carrying hundreds of South Korean high school students on a field trip sunk, killing almost everyone on board. Hauntingly, their deaths were fully avoidable: everyone from the dock inspector to the Coast Guard to the president failed them. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:35Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:45Josh Clark?

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

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm glad we took a break. It's good to be back.

• 1:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  It's 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.

• 2:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, in the Arangmadon short stuff, you're like, this is it for a while, man.

• 2:20Speaker 02

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

• 2:24Josh Clark?

  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 16th, 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.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, 11 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.

• 3:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  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, it was all sort of human caused. And even once this thing started, started listing and tilting to the side, there was still plenty of time to rescue everyone and it just didn't happen.

• 3:34Josh Clark?

  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 16th, much the same way we call September 11th, 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?

• 4:16Josh Clark?

  And the Sewol disaster was a close second behind the Korean War.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:22Josh Clark?

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

• 4:28Speaker 02

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

• 4:32Josh Clark?

  What?

• 4:34Speaker 02

  911.

• 4:36Josh Clark?

  For real?

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:38Josh Clark?

  Is he being facetious?

• 4:39Speaker 02

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

• 4:43Josh Clark?

  Does he, if he breaks his legs, does he shout, "Call 9/11"?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  I'm not sure. Alright, that's probably the last joke I'll tell. Wanted to go ahead and get one in there.

• 4:54Josh Clark?

  Okay, thank you.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Uh, so let's, let's start the story here. Donwon High School is, that's D-A-N-W-O-N, not Donwon, like Donwon, DeMarco. Uh, it is a public school. It's about an hour and a half outside of Seoul. It's in a city called Anseon. And this is, like you mentioned, a class trip. This is a, a sort of a, 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?

• 5:27Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm. Yep, for sure.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Uh, 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, um, sort of a last hurrah before they start their senior year. And that's what they set off for on the night of April 15th, 2014.

• 5:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, also, we need to do at least a short stuff on the sea set. They call it the Seon-yung, which is, it makes the SAT look like a walk in the park.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, really?

• 5:59Josh Clark?

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

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 6:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it'll be an interesting one. So, um, they, they embarked for Jeju from Incheon, like I was saying, and it was gonna be an overnight journey. I think it's a 13-hour ferry trip, um, to Jeju. And there was a really heavy fog, so much so that the, the, the teachers on the trip considered like just canceling it. It was just, it just seemed that dangerous. And finally, everyone agreed, including the crew of the SUEW 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.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and as you'll see, that was, um... 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're trying to go faster because they got a later start and that, that seems like it affected the disaster.

• 7:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. The Sual 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 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 ripe for overloading.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:52Josh Clark?

  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 Chonghai Jin Marine bought that ship and put it into service.

• 8:14Speaker 02

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

• 8:18Josh Clark?

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

• 8:22Speaker 02

  So there were 476 total passengers onboard, 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 onboard. There were construction materials, there were cars and trucks. When you see, you know, 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.

• 8:58Josh Clark?

  So like fifty, about almost fifty percent over

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:02Josh Clark?

  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.

• 9:20Josh Clark?

  The third mate was on the bridge in charge earlier that morning.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:25Josh Clark?

  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 the third mate ordered the quartermaster at about eight forty-five a.m. 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 twenty degrees to start.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  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.

• 10:22Josh Clark?

  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.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:39Josh Clark?

  She did the, essentially the film for the Snowden files. And Citizen for 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 twenty plus minute documentary that shows the ship sinking.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:01Josh Clark?

  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.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 11:12Josh Clark?

  The incompetence, the indifference, the arrogance.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:16Josh Clark?

  The just the negligence, all of the instances, all the bad instances like 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.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  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, hey, 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?

• 12:13Josh Clark?

  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.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:21Josh Clark?

  It's just disgusting, right? So the the kids on board, they all had smartphones. It's 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.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:38Josh Clark?

  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,

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:11Josh Clark?

  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.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:18Josh Clark?

  Essentially from the ship actually sinking and from just the terrible guidance or lack of guidance from the people who were in charge.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, the guidance was stay where you are, put on your life vests and stay in your cabin. There was silence for a little while and then when, you know, 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

• 14:09Speaker 02

  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.

• 14:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, go jump off the side of the ship.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:26Josh Clark?

  You know, yeah, like that's, you can totally understand where she's coming from, but I can also understand that that's her greatest regret.

• 14:32Speaker 02

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

• 14:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So 8:55 AM, 10 minutes after the ship turned and started to list. The SUEWALL crew makes their first distress call. Three minutes earlier, the very first distress call from the SUEWALL was made by one of the students.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:58Josh Clark?

  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?

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:10Josh Clark?

  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, like did anything about this.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  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.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Like, hey, anybody that's near us, we need help right now. And a lot of them showed up.

• 16:12Josh Clark?

  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 Sewol ferry, were rescued by civilian fishing boats. In 10 minutes, 10-minute span, half of the survivors were rescued. This was 20:30, 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 turn. And what, 40 minutes after the call for help?

• 16:56Josh Clark?

  The Coast Guard finally shows up. The ship is at 60 degrees now. 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.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  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.

• 17:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  This, you know, you said the crew all got off. It wasn't everybody. I think there were 14 crew members that were rescued at 9:47 a.m. A few crew members, to their credit, went down with the ship and were doing everything they could. So they were, you know, 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.

• 18:18Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Lifting them to safety. And they still, these kids are still being told to stay in their room. So it's not like everyone was on on top of the deck or, you know, wherever they could be seen.

• 18:29Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  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.

• 18:43Josh Clark?

  Right. So the

• 18:48Josh Clark?

  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.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:59Josh Clark?

  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 sewall within I think just a couple hours, Chuck.

• 19:45Josh Clark?

  It went from completely above water to totally sunk, totally submerged. And there were still 304 people trapped inside when it sank.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  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 in 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.

• 20:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, one of, two of them were an engaged couple.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  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.

• 20:36Josh Clark?

  Okay, we will do that.

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• 21:59Josh Clark?

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• 23:07Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we gonna do all this?

• 23:09Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

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• 23:28Speaker 03

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• 23:36Josh Clark?

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• 23:59Josh Clark?

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• 24:03Speaker 05

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• 24:17Josh Clark?

  I think you said earlier Chuck, we're back by the way, that 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 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 it turned, they learned that no, this is not the case.

• 25:01Josh Clark?

  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.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:13Josh Clark?

  In a boat and were going to die.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  And because of this, and this thing just seems like it keeps getting worse and worse and worse.

• 26:03Josh Clark?

  It does.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  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.

• 26:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  Like putting out stories about the families, like accusing 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.

• 26:49Josh Clark?

  They went to great lengths and spent a lot of money and effort to deflect the focus, attention and blame from itself, the government.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  And discredit the parents.

• 27:00Josh Clark?

  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.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:08Josh Clark?

  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

• 27:53Josh Clark?

  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 deepened 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.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  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 commendable, obviously. But, you know, 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 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.

• 28:57Josh Clark?

  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 today.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:07Josh Clark?

  They did not do almost anything. It's just astounding the little that they did.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  That's what I don't get. Like, why? Why?

• 29:16Josh Clark?

  I don't know why. But I do know that as a direct result of this, 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.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:39Josh Clark?

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

• 29:43Speaker 02

  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 infuriating.

• 29:58Josh Clark?

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

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:05Josh Clark?

  There was no like, I'm accountable, no accountability. Well put.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  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.

• 30:28Josh Clark?

  Right. So the ferry company is cutting every corner they can to maximize profit and putting profit ahead of passenger safety by a lot, 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, the distance between the, 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

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  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.

• 31:36Speaker 02

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

• 31:42Josh Clark?

  Isn't, isn't that insane?

• 31:43Speaker 02

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

• 32:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they definitely did. Uh, one of them was the captain. His name is Lee Jun Seok. Uh, and he was put on trial for negligent homicide. He, his, his defense was that he was stunned and confused.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:33Josh Clark?

  By the accident. Uh, and he just, he wasn't able to make decisions because he was so stunned and confused. That was his, his defense.

• 32:41Speaker 02

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

• 32:44Josh Clark?

  No, for sure. Um, the, the, I guess he also gave conflicting testimony.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:51Josh Clark?

  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, uh, used a bullhorn to tell everyone to evacuate. He definitely did not do any of those.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:05Josh Clark?

  Later, he gave a somewhat more rational and sensible explanation. He said that essentially, uh, 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. Um, and then 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's no way to defend his actions, even if some of his thinking was potentially reasonable.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. He said that he didn't know, he, he claimed to not know the status of the passengers when he abandoned ship, which in admission, you know, in and of itself is, is awful. Uh, and he went to trial, of course. Um, we're going to talk about, you know, a lot of the trials here at the end, but his trial was the most sort of, um, cause you know, it was, it was on TV. The captain, you know, coming out in his underwear and getting on that, it was, 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.

• 34:22Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  And he was sentenced to 36 years in prison. Uh, 14 members of the crew, the 14 that evacuated, um, they got sentenced as well from five to 30 years, but they appealed the verdict, uh, and made it worse. He eventually got a life sentence out of this. Um, and some of the crew members had their sentences dialed back a little bit because they were acting on captain's orders.

• 34:43Josh Clark?

  Right. Um, a lot of the families were like, uh, 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, um, early on Chuck, really early on, as the government's just doing anything it can to deflect blame or responsibility, um, they zeroed in on one of the owners of Chonghe Jin Marine, which owned the ferry. Uh, he was a billionaire, um, named Yoo Byung Un. He was seventy-three. His family was the co-owner of the, the company and also a bunch of other companies. And the government did the same thing that it later did with the families.

• 35:25Josh Clark?

  It basically started feeding secretly info to the media and the media turned around and reported on it. And all of a sudden, there, I saw this graph of, you know, day by day.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:38Josh Clark?

  News reports on the seawall ferry sinking. They start to go down as the reports on, um, uh, Yoo Byung Sun 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.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. So he goes on the lam. Uh, he's a very well-known guy in, in South Korea at the time, even before this. Um, mainly because, uh, well, I mean, he was a billionaire businessman, so that's one, but, uh, 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. Uh, 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, uh, vacation house. And then that summer in July, uh, they found him in the woods, basically. He was in a plum orchard, uh, had killed himself. Uh, his body was badly decomposed at that

• 36:41Speaker 02

  point. So, um, he, you know, the most cowardly thing he could do, he, he fled, hid, and then took his own life to avoid, um, responsibility.

• 36:50Josh Clark?

  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.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:09Josh Clark?

  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.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, should we take our final break?

• 37:36Josh Clark?

  I think that's a good idea.

• 37:38Speaker 02

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

• 37:57Josh Clark?

  If you own a home, you already know stuff breaks. It's not if, it's when. And somehow it's always like the AC in July or the fridge right after you go to the grocery store. That's why you always hear people say they don't make appliances like they used to because it's kind of true.

• 38:13Speaker 02

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• 38:25Josh Clark?

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• 38:39Speaker 02

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• 39:06Speaker 02

  You know, you're never done decorating your home. You know what I mean?

• 39:09Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do, or buy, or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly. It's usually a new rug.

• 39:20Josh Clark?

  Well, Chuck, whether you need a rug, or whatever is next for you, you can go to Wayfair. It's the smart place to get it.

• 39:27Speaker 02

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• 39:39Josh Clark?

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• 40:04Josh Clark?

  Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours? The moment you met your partner, landed that promotion? For people living with a rare disease, life can feel divided into before the diagnosis and all the after moments that follow. On Voices of VivGart, VivGart is also known as its generic name, Efgartigimod alfa Fcab, you'll hear powerful stories from people facing challenges and embracing a life with a rare disease.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Join host Andra Stratten as she guides listeners through honest conversations about life after diagnosis. You'll hear how each guest worked with her care team on their treatment plan, as well as their personal challenges, setbacks, progress, and moments of connection.

• 40:41Josh Clark?

  These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  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 Gyeonhee 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 was, 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 just, it was a real mess from the beginning, and they still don't know.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  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.

• 42:02Josh Clark?

  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.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  That's right. I remember hearing that.

• 42:16Josh Clark?

  Hours before that, they're like, it's sealed. It's the most suspicious thing I've ever heard in my life.

• 42:23Speaker 02

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

• 42:29Josh Clark?

  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?

• 42:40Speaker 02

  All of a sudden, it's a South Park movie.

• 42:42Josh Clark?

  Pretty, pretty much. Oh, come on, guy.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  So, uh, obviously, the, you know, politics are politics. So the political opposition is going to just jump on this moment and say, you know, the, you know, they're behind the families, of course, if you're on the other side of the political spectrum.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  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.

• 43:19Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 43:19Speaker 02

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

• 43:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah. The Park family, in fact, had a 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. So not exactly the family you want running your country after all.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  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?

• 44:15Josh Clark?

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

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Wait, you do?

• 44:26Josh Clark?

  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 Sewol ferry.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 44:38Josh Clark?

  We don't know.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  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.

• 44:49Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. What they don't know is why it, why they made that sharp turn to begin with.

• 44:55Josh Clark?

  Uh, I, did I send this to you? I don't, or 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.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 45:06Josh Clark?

  To avoid an oncoming ship that was coming very closely.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. I didn't see that part.

• 45:10Josh Clark?

  And, um, 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 out right after the ship turned, going the other direction of what seemed to be another ship.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Okay. So that, that might've been the reason?

• 45:32Josh Clark?

  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 five degrees like the third mate ordered me to. Like it just kept going and skidding essentially.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, you know, we mentioned the crew and the captain that got, uh, and the president that all got prison sentences. Uh, the, the owner of that ferry company had taken his own life, but I think it was his son that was the CEO.

• 46:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  He was convicted on accidental homicide charges, but also an embezzlement thing. Um, so he got a seven year term for both of those. Uh, there was a shipping official that, you know, the ones who said, hey, you're fine to go, uh, without checking its cargo. Um, he was sentenced to three years. Uh, a couple of workers with a private company that overloaded the ship to begin with. They got two years. Uh, the ferry company and this one, um, they ended up getting a pretty good payout. There was a civil wrongful death civil suit. And in 2018, uh, court ordered the government and the ferry company to pay the families, uh, what would be about $530,000 per victim in American dollars, which is about 600 million yuan.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  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?

• 47:08Josh Clark?

  No, 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 then dry docked it. It's pretty astounding that they were able to get that thing out of the water, out of, I think, 120 feet 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.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:39Josh Clark?

  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.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  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 victims' families.

• 48:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Speaker 02

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

• 48:42Josh Clark?

  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.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:13Josh Clark?

  And it's now a memorial museum, the 416 Memorial Classroom.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:18Josh Clark?

  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 is still up.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Ah geez.

• 49:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it looks really stirring.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  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 E. Taiwan 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.

• 50:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because I guess what I left off, the, the main point of what they're agitating for is better government regulation to, for, for public safety responses for

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:26Josh Clark?

  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.

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:40Josh Clark?

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

• 50:44Speaker 02

  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?

• 50:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And we talked about the Taiwan Crowd Crush in the Crowd Crush episode.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, that's right.

• 51:02Josh Clark?

  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.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 51:11Josh Clark?

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

• 51:17Speaker 02

  This is not a sad listener mail, so we're gonna end on a little brighter note. It's about deodorant. Hey, guys, I listened to the anti-puriment 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.

• 51:37Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  If you mix equal-ish parts of coconut oil with baking soda to your favorite consistency, maybe if you have a favorite essential oil of desire, 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 instinct. And we get a cheers from Chris, and Chris has a little PS. If you get irritated from the baking soda, maybe just add some more coconut oil until your skin doesn't complain.

• 52:15Josh Clark?

  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."

• 52:41Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, 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.

• 52:52Josh Clark?

  It's like the old slogan says, "A couple of 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 [email protected].

• 53:06Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:21Josh Clark?

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• 54:04Josh Clark?

  these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. I am here to talk to you about Dude Wipes, who offer fragrance-free wipes that are made with 99% water and plant-based ingredients. So they're gentle enough for sensitive skin, but they're tough enough for even the worst messes. Water cleans better, and Dude Wipes flushable wipes deliver textbook freshness and ultimate clean. And just like human body molecules, Dude Wipes are made with 99% water.

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