Related: Korean Ferry Resurfaces
"S. Korean ferry sinking prompts official to quit" by Choe Sang-Hun | New York Times April 28, 2014
SEOUL — Prime Minister Chung Hong Won, the number two official in the South Korean government, apologized and offered his resignation on Sunday, as the country remained angry and saddened over the sinking of a ferry that left 302 people, the vast majority of them high school students, dead or missing.
President Park Geun Hye quickly accepted his resignation but asked Chung to stay in his post until the government completes its rescue operations, said Min Kyung Wook, a presidential spokesman.
The government has come under fire as early investigations revealed loopholes in safety measures and lax regulatory enforcement that investigators said contributed to the sinking of the 6,825-ton ferry, the Sewol, on April 16.
In a thriving economy, too.
It was also criticized for failing to respond quickly and efficiently to the crisis and for fumbling during the early stages of rescue operations.
As of Sunday morning, 115 ferry passengers remained missing. The number of the survivors, 174, has not changed for the past 11 days. The official death toll was at 187.
Public anger spilled onto the official website of Park’s office, where someone posted a message on Sunday to say “why you should not be the president.” The posting, which accused Park of failing to show leadership in the handling of the ferry disaster, attracted 200,000 views within 12 hours, as well as hundreds of supportive comments.
A somber-looking Chung accepted the criticism on Sunday when he offered “an apology to the people” during a nationally televised news conference. “When I saw the people’s sadness and fury, I thought it was natural for me to step down with an apology,” he said.
Chung is the highest-ranking government official to lose his job over the sinking, South Korea’s worst disaster since 1995, when a department store collapsed in Seoul, killing 501 people.
South Koreans were especially traumatized by the fact that most of the dead and missing were students on a class trip.
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The prime minister is a largely ceremonial post in South Korea, with the executive power concentrated in the president, and is sometimes fired when the government needs to soothe public anger after a major scandal or policy failure.
Korean scapegoat and raw meat for the crowd.
Park’s tumultuous first year in office has been rocked by scandals in domestic politics, as well as unusually high tensions with North Korea....
Related: Korean Coverage No Ferry
Just ratcheting them up even more on his way though.
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"South Korean ferry disaster and us" by James Carroll | Globe Columnist April 28, 2014
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The sad story of the Korean ferry, with a captain who thought only of himself, suggests a far more disturbing image: that of a shipwrecked commonwealth in which positions of ostensible leadership have been cut off from any sense of common good. The obligation of a ship’s captain to be the last to leave a stricken vessel epitomizes the positive virtue of noblesse oblige — the idea that power and privilege come with responsibility toward those who have neither.
Yet the ferry disaster, with its rogue captain on the run, offers a parallel to what Americans now see throughout our society: the detachment of a rich and powerful elite that looks out for its own advantage, with no regard for the welfare of the rest of those aboard.
A recent social science study (by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page) concludes that a very small clique of economically privileged Americans regularly overwhelm the will of the general public, and a much discussed recent book (“Capital in the 21st Century” by Thomas Piketty) argues that, as a result of multigenerational patterns of savage income inequality, a social mutation has occurred, wholly severing the tie between the extremely wealthy and the vast population.
Tell us something we don't already know, and help us do something about it!
Of course, his paper is a reflection of that group and is written of and for them. I'm not complaining, I'm just finally seeing the behind the mask of well-meaning corporate liberalism that supports the $tatu$ quo behind the divisive agenda-pu$hing.
But the metaphor is wrong. The elite are not the captain; they are the high end of first class, with more and more of the passengers consigned to steerage.
Yes, the captains and crew are the political $ervants and $laves of that cla$$.
Related:
"A letter written by a passenger on the Titanic describing the ‘‘wonderful passage’’ — hours before the ship hit an iceberg and eventually sank — sold at auction Saturday for $200,000. Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said the handwritten note was bought by an anonymous overseas telephone bidder during a sale in Devizes. It was written by English passenger Esther Hart, who survived, along with her daughter (AP)."
April a bad month for boats.
And they have not so much abandoned the ship as they have hijacked it....
What charged language, as well as instantly making on think of the missing Malaysian Flight 370.
By analogy, all Americans are urged (by Republican party orthodoxy, for example) to ignore their own peril and advance the interests of the elite, approving policies (on taxation, say) that destroy the broader common good.
I'm tired of that $hit-fooley $how when both parties are bought off by the $ame intere$ts and everyone sees it.
Regularly voting against their economic interest, a huge percentage of Americans cooperate in their own disempowerment — and relative impoverishment.
If you believe AmeriKan election results from rigged machines.
Meanwhile, so vast has grown the civic gulf between the very rich and the rest that the privileged are blind to the consequences of the social organization on which they depend.
Blinded by GREED!
Let’s not push the comparison too far. The Korean ferry was no ship of state, nor were its passengers symbols of any kind; they were living persons who are now dead.
Yeah, I kinda wanted to get around to that part, you know, the dead people.
Yet....
Sigh.
Yet we have a self-absorbed AmeriKan opinion.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Looks like readers interest is sinking judging by the hits.
"Divers renew search for South Korea ferry dead" by Hyung-Jin Kim | Associated Press April 29, 2014
JINDO, South Korea — An impromptu city has sprung up at this normally sleepy port to help the families of those lost in the disaster.
A sense of national mourning over a tragedy that will probably result in more than 300 deaths, most of them high school students, has prompted an outpouring of volunteers. More than 16,000 people have come to help.
The volunteers handle much of the care that relatives of the missing receive in Jindo as they wait for divers to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones from the wreckage of the ferry Sewol.
People from aid groups, private companies, churches, and other organizations pack a gym and roads lined with white tents, offering soup, kimchi, rice, hamburgers, taxi services, cellphone battery charging, laundry services, medicine, energy drinks, psychiatric help, and necessities like underwear, socks, and toothbrushes.
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Some scrub toilets and bathroom floors at the gym where families sleep, keeping the amenities practically spotless. A man walks with a huge sign that says ‘‘I will wash clothes for you.’’
They cook huge pots of hot kimchi soup, distribute blankets, towels and toiletries, pick up trash, and sweep the grounds. Turkish volunteers offer kebabs, turning on spits. One truck distributes homemade tofu, another pizza....
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