This looks like as good a spot as any....
"Three weeks after South Korea’s ferry tragedy, the government on Wednesday said it miscounted the survivors, the latest of many missteps that have eroded the nation’s confidence in its leaders. Coast guard chief Kim Suk-kyoon said there are two more missing passengers than authorities previously knew about, both Chinese nationals. The lengthy, difficult underwater search for bodies has deepened the anguish. Families of missing people have been camping out at a nearby port waiting for news."
That reminds me; the Malaysian airliner search has disappeared from my Globe, probably because the new theory is it landed somewhere and they have been looking in the wrong place the whole time.
"S. Korean leader, media face scrutiny over ferry disaster" by Choe Sang-Hun | New York Times May 10, 2014
SEOUL — Parents of high school students killed in the South Korean ferry disaster marched on the office of President Park Geun-hye in central Seoul on Friday, as prosecutors tightened their investigative noose around an enigmatic family that controls the operator of the doomed ferry.
Holding photos of their children, the parents said they came to ask for a meeting with Park to demand an inquiry into allegations that a tardy and bumbling response by her government drastically increased the number of deaths in the country’s worst disaster in decades.
You can watch it all go down for yourself.
They also demanded that the government dismiss a top news editor at KBS, South Korea’s largest public broadcasting company, where the government has at least an indirect influence in appointing its top management. Some local media quoted the editor as saying during a recent lunch with colleagues that the number of dead in the ferry tragedy was “not many, compared with the number of people killed in traffic accidents each year.”
KBS denied that the editor made the comment.
“We are not criminals,” Kim Byong-kwon, whose daughter died in the sinking of the ferry Sewol on April 16, shouted through a loudspeaker. “We have come here not as protesters but to make an appeal to her.”
Two senior presidential aides met family representatives. For 12 hours, hundreds of parents and supporters staged a sit-in near Park’s presidential palace, until Kil Hwan-young, head of KBS, came and apologized for the editor’s “inappropriate” comment.
Their sit-in, and its intense media coverage, represented the latest sign of brewing political trouble for Park. Her approval ratings have sharply dropped since the disaster, with some South Koreans calling for her resignation.
This after she was trying to patch things up with the North!
On Thursday, eight university students climbed the landmark statue of an ancient Korean king in central Seoul, unfurling a banner that said, “Down with the Park Geun-hye regime!” They were quickly detained by the police.
As of Friday, 273 people were found to have died in the disaster, a vast majority of them students. Divers were still searching the sunken ferry and its vicinity for 31 people who remain missing more than three weeks after the overloaded vessel sank off southwestern South Korea.
Park has apologized several times for failing to prevent the disaster and what she called her government’s fumbling in the early stages of rescue efforts.
They evacuated the crew first thing!
Under the mounting pressure, she has vowed stern punishment, blaming the accident on “the deep-rooted evils from the past” — corporate greed and collusive ties between businesses and regulators that she said bred lax safety measures and loose regulatory enforcement.
You know, the AmeriKan model.
On Friday, prosecutors tightened their investigations around the family of Yoo Byung-eun, who had made headlines in the 1990s when he was investigated in the mass suicide of 32 members of a religious cult and was convicted of fraud.
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"4 employed by operator of doomed South Korean ferry are arrested" by Choe Sang-Hun | New York Times May 07, 2014
SEOUL —Since the 6,825-ton ferry Sewol sank off southwestern South Korea on April 16, damning charges of poor seamanship, corporate greed, and lax regulatory enforcement of safety measures have surfaced, leaving little doubt among South Koreans that the ferry, in retrospect, had been a recipe for disaster.
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The officials faced criminal charges, including accidental homicide. They were accused of contributing to the deaths of passengers by ordering the overloading of the ship or ignoring the danger that the excessive cargo and its improper stowage caused to the vessel’s stability.
Investigators had earlier said the Sewol suddenly listed and began sinking while making a sharp turn amid a strong current.
Blamed the crew first off, and it was a lie!
That seems to be government's -- no matter where they are found -- knee-jerk reaction to everything. Lie first, then worry about public relations imagery and illusion.
They also attributed the accident to the recent addition of cabins in the upper decks that made the ship top-heavy and impaired its ability to right itself after tilting.
Many of the vehicles, shipping containers, and other cargo on board were also poorly lashed or not tied down at all, letting them slide to the side when the ship tilted, further damaging its ability to recover its balance, they said.
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In South Korea, where memories of large-scale disasters, like the collapse of a Seoul department store that killed 501 people in 1995, remain fresh, the ferry disaster stood out as one of the most traumatizing.
Of the 302 people dead or missing, 250 were high school students who survivors said were trapped inside the ship because the crew repeatedly urged them to stay put while the ship was badly tilting.
Some of the trapped students asked for help or bid farewell to their families through cellphone text messages or video footage, leaving the country in a wrenching state of anguish, grief, and shame.
If you scroll down Korea you will see where it got to me.
For three weeks, distraught families have camped out on a pier near the site of the sinking. Divers have been struggling against strong currents and poor visibility to reach the ship lying on its side 120 feet underwater.
Once there, they crawled through a dark maze of corridors and cabins clogged with debris to pull out scores of bodies. On Tuesday, one of the divers died after losing consciousness underwater.
“As the president, who must protect the lives of the people, I am sorry and heavy-hearted,” Park said while visiting a temple in central Seoul on Tuesday to mark Buddha’s birthday. “I am at a loss what to say to console the families who lost young students.”
It was her second apology in a week for failing to prevent the disaster and for the government’s fumbling of the early phases of rescue operations. Her approval ratings have plummeted in recent opinion surveys.
Park responded to the disaster with a vow to fight the “deep-rooted evils of the past” — collusive ties between shipping companies, private safety inspectors, and government ministries that she said created safety loopholes. On Tuesday, Park singled out businessmen who were “blinded by material greed and did not follow safety regulations” and regulators whose “irresponsibility in glossing over such injustice resulted in killing people.”
Prosecutors have raided the homes of a family that owns a major stake in Chonghaejin Marine through another company. They were also investigating two ship inspection agencies: the Korea Shipping Association and the Korean Register of Shipping.
The ship’s captain, Lee Jun-seok, and 14 other crew members have been arrested on charges of abandoning their ship first, without alerting or escorting passengers to evacuate.
The disaster has exposed enormous safety gaps in the country’s domestic ferry industry, as President Park Geun-hye attributed one of her country’s worst peacetime disasters to corporate greed.
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