Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
Speaker 2: should Know, part of our ongoing marine disaster suite. I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad we took a break. It's good to
Speaker 1: be back.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's very sad, I mean, just sort of devastating topic today,
Speaker 1: as they usually are. This one's especially sad. I think
Speaker 1: it's more recent and involved kids. But yeah, we were
Speaker 1: on a run there for a while and we took
Speaker 1: a break, and now we're back with more maritime disaster Yeah.
Speaker 2: In the Orang Madon short stuff, You're like, this is
Speaker 2: it for a while? Man?
Speaker 1: I think I did. I totally Can we stop with these?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So yeah, the Sewell disasters what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Sewell was the name of a faery that went between
Speaker 2: the southern tip of South Korea and Jaju, kind of
Speaker 2: a tropical island resort, a resort island off of Korea,
Speaker 2: and in twenty fourteen, on April sixteenth, actually we're releasing
Speaker 2: this on the twelfth anniversary. With this tragedy, three hundred
Speaker 2: and four people died, including two hundred and fifty eleventh
Speaker 2: grade high school students who were on a class field trip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, eleven of their teachers. Very sadly, one of the
Speaker 1: teachers who survived took his life two days after this
Speaker 1: disaster with you know, a case of sort of survivor's guilt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was very the one that really the thing
Speaker 1: that really burns me up about this one is, you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't an iceberg or a bad storm. It was
Speaker 1: it was all sort of human caused and even once
Speaker 1: this thing started started listing and tilting to the side,
Speaker 1: there was still plenty of time to rescue everyone, and
Speaker 1: it just didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Right. It's like Oprah should walk up and be like
Speaker 2: you're to blame, You're to blame, and you're to blame.
Speaker 2: Like everyone was to blame except for the people who died. Essentially,
Speaker 2: there's like it was just totally senseless. There was no
Speaker 2: need for it, Like it could have been totally avoided.
Speaker 2: And this had such an enormous impact on South Korean society.
Speaker 2: They call it four sixteen because it happened on April sixteenth,
Speaker 2: much the same way we call September eleventh. Nine to
Speaker 2: eleven in the United States, And there was a public
Speaker 2: survey that was done I think by PW that said, like,
Speaker 2: what are the most important historical events in the history
Speaker 2: of Korea? And the Sewel disaster was a close second
Speaker 2: behind the Korean War. That's how important and how huge
Speaker 2: of a sweeping impact this had on the entire society.
Speaker 1: You know what, Emily's dad calls nine to eleven?
Speaker 2: What nine? For real?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is he being facetious?
Speaker 1: No, that's just how That's how Rick rolls. He's got
Speaker 1: his own language.
Speaker 2: Does he. If so, if he breaks his legs as
Speaker 2: he shout called nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Uh, all right, that's probably the last
Speaker 1: joke I'll tell I want to go ahead and get
Speaker 1: one in there.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1: Uh so, let's let's start the story here. Don Juan
Speaker 1: High School is that's d A N W O N
Speaker 1: not Don Juan like Don Juan DeMarco. It is a
Speaker 1: public school. It's about an hour and a half outside
Speaker 1: of Seoul. It's in a city called Ensan. And this is,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, a class trip. This is a sort
Speaker 1: of an annual tradition where the eleventh graders go on
Speaker 1: this trip to this gorgeous island which is also a
Speaker 1: UNESCO Heritage Site, and I think we're gonna be doing
Speaker 1: an episode on that pretty soon, right unscom Yep.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 1: And the whole idea is that they go before they
Speaker 1: have to sort of buckle down and get ready for
Speaker 1: their version of their the SAT, the c SAT, which
Speaker 1: is what they have in Korea. So they go for
Speaker 1: this great trip every year, sort of a last hurrah
Speaker 1: before they start their senior year, and that's what they
Speaker 1: set off for on the night of April fifteenth, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, we need to do at least the short
Speaker 2: stuff on the sea set. They call it the sun Jung,
Speaker 2: which is it makes the SAT look like a walk
Speaker 2: in the park.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Really, it's insane. I saw one question from it. It was like,
Speaker 2: I don't know anyone who could answer this question. Oh wow, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: it'll be an interesting one. So they embarked for Jeju
Speaker 2: from Incheon, like I was saying, and it was gonna
Speaker 2: be an overnight journey. I think it's a thirteen hour
Speaker 2: faery trip to Jaju. And there was a really heavy fog,
Speaker 2: so much so that the teachers on the trip considered
Speaker 2: like just canceling it. It was just it just seemed
Speaker 2: that dangerous. And finally everyone read, including the crew of
Speaker 2: the Seul and the teachers, that let's just go ahead.
Speaker 2: Two and a half hours later, they finally set sail,
Speaker 2: but they were the only commercial vessel to leave port
Speaker 2: that night because that fog was so bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as you'll see, that was I guess we'll
Speaker 1: go ahead list that as number one of ways that
Speaker 1: this disaster could have been averted. A these kids not
Speaker 1: going at all, but B they you know, they're trying
Speaker 1: to go faster because they got a later start, and
Speaker 1: that seems like it affected the disaster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. The Suwal had also been around for
Speaker 2: twenty years. It had served twenty years as a Japanese
Speaker 2: ferry off Okinawa called the Namanui, which is a Shinto
Speaker 2: shrine in Okinawa that looks over the sea and gives
Speaker 2: blessings for safe trips to the ships going in and
Speaker 2: out of port. And the ferry which was the Namanui,
Speaker 2: was purchased and re christened the Sewal by chonghai Jin Marine,
Speaker 2: which is the company that owned the ferry, and two
Speaker 2: things to increase profits they expanded passenger decks to add
Speaker 2: basically two more passenger decks, They expanded the cargo area,
Speaker 2: and they essentially made this ship ripe for overloading. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's number one. Number two, the Korean government had recently
Speaker 2: extended the life of ferry ships from twenty years to thirty.
Speaker 2: The reason it got retired in Okinawa is because it's
Speaker 2: just sensible to only let them go for twenty years.
Speaker 2: In Korea South Korea, you could run them for thirty years,
Speaker 2: which is why chung Hijin Marine bought that ship and
Speaker 2: put it into service.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I bet they got a pretty good deal on
Speaker 1: it at that age, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure the o Canawans were like you sure
Speaker 2: you want this, and they were like yeah.
Speaker 1: So there were four hundred and seventy six total passengers
Speaker 1: on board, but there was also like you said, it
Speaker 1: was ripe for overloading, and that's what they did. They
Speaker 1: had more than twenty one hundred tons of rate on board.
Speaker 1: There were construction materials, There were cars and trucks. When
Speaker 1: you see you know, video from sort of inside this
Speaker 1: thing while it was pitching and tilting, you see like
Speaker 1: huge work trucks like being slammed against the wall and
Speaker 1: into other cars and things like that. In the end,
Speaker 1: it was about a thousand tons over what its maximum
Speaker 1: capacity was supposed to be, so.
Speaker 2: Like about almost fifty percent over Yeah, maximum capacity. That's insane,
Speaker 2: and we'll explain how they got away with that eventually. So,
Speaker 2: like you said, they were trying to make up for
Speaker 2: lost time, so they sailed faster than they normally would
Speaker 2: have to make it to Jaju on their schedule time.
Speaker 2: Remember they left two and a half hours late. The
Speaker 2: third mate was on the bridge in charge earlier that morning. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not entirely inappropriate. This was like open sea. It
Speaker 2: should have been basically in nothing stretch. But the point
Speaker 2: is that the captain, the first make, and the second
Speaker 2: mate were not on the bridge. The third mate was
Speaker 2: in charge, and the third mate ordered the quartermaster at
Speaker 2: about eight forty five am to make a sudden turn.
Speaker 2: I don't remember if it's port or starboard. And when
Speaker 2: the ship made the turn, it turned really hard and
Speaker 2: there was a horrible crashing sign and all of a
Speaker 2: sudden it tilted. It listed in the water and I
Speaker 2: think something like twenty degrees to start.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's that's a bad start. It did not
Speaker 1: right itself, because what had happened was, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff down there wasn't secured like it
Speaker 1: should have been. And when I said, you know, trucks
Speaker 1: went slamming against the walls and into other cars, that's
Speaker 1: what happened. All this heavy stuff shifted in such a
Speaker 1: way that it would not shift.
Speaker 2: Back right exactly. So not only was it not going
Speaker 2: to write itself, it was going to just keep listing
Speaker 2: and listing and listening. And that's exactly what happened. There
Speaker 2: is a short documentary I thought it was produced by
Speaker 2: Laura Poetrous, which that's quality stuff. She did the essentially
Speaker 2: the film for the Snowden Files and Citizen for the documentary. Anyway.
Speaker 2: You can find it on YouTube. I think New Yorker
Speaker 2: bought it. It's called In the Absence, and it is
Speaker 2: this almost in real time, like twenty plus minute documentary
Speaker 2: that shows the ship sinking and then against it puts
Speaker 2: the like the conversations between all the people who are
Speaker 2: supposed to be rescuing this and doing something about this,
Speaker 2: and just puts on full display man the incompetence, the indifference,
Speaker 2: the arrogance, the just the negligence, all of the enses,
Speaker 2: all the bad ences, like are just on full display.
Speaker 2: It's so shocking to hear this and see it and
Speaker 2: know what happened and know who's inside there, and then
Speaker 2: to hear what they actually did or didn't do to
Speaker 2: to rescue them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like like tied to the minute. So you'll see,
Speaker 1: you know, toward the end of this documentary, it's a
Speaker 1: hard watch, but it's well well worth checking out. You'll
Speaker 1: see like ninety five percent of this boat is underwater
Speaker 1: and sunk with all these people on board, and you'll
Speaker 1: hear in real time, like at that exact moment in time,
Speaker 1: you know, the coastguard saying like you think we can
Speaker 1: land a helicopter on this thing now and try and
Speaker 1: get some of these people out, and other people that
Speaker 1: are there, like I think, I don't think we can
Speaker 1: land a helicopter on it anymore, And it's like it's
Speaker 1: gone basically at that point. It's just it's infuriating to watch,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even after that, the guy who's like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: a shame that we can't land the helicopter that would
Speaker 2: look really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's just disgusting. Right, So the kids on board they
Speaker 2: all had smartphones twenty fourteen in South Korea. Every single
Speaker 2: one of them had a smartphone, and there are a
Speaker 2: lot of viving documents and texts from the kids on board. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so we know a lot of what happened in the
Speaker 2: first Like I think all the way up for like
Speaker 2: almost an hour and a half after this ship listed
Speaker 2: of what was going on, and at first the kids
Speaker 2: were fairly calm. Twenty degree list is substantial, but it's
Speaker 2: not panic time necessarily for everybody. It feels like people
Speaker 2: are still in charge. Things are okay, but there's conversations
Speaker 2: between the kids that are like, is this one of
Speaker 2: those things where the only people who survive are the
Speaker 2: ones who don't follow orders, you know, Like yeah, and
Speaker 2: they're joking about how the ship is sinking and all that,
Speaker 2: and little did they know that within an hour they
Speaker 2: would all be dead, essentially from the ship actually sinking
Speaker 2: and from just the terrible guidance or lack of guidance
Speaker 2: from the people who were in charge.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the guidance was stay where you are, put
Speaker 1: on your life best and stay in your cabin. There
Speaker 1: was silence for a little while and then when you know,
Speaker 1: they came over the loudspeaker. They repeatedly, I think seven
Speaker 1: different times as this thing was sinking, they were like,
Speaker 1: stay in your cabins, stay in your cabins, and remain calm.
Speaker 1: Parents were calling or students were calling their parents from
Speaker 1: their phones. There was that brutal interview with a one
Speaker 1: parent that it was a couple, but the mom was
Speaker 1: like her one regret was she didn't say, like, stop
Speaker 1: following their instructions, get out while you can. But as
Speaker 1: you know, I just hated that because as a parent,
Speaker 1: you aren't there. You don't know what's exactly happening, although
Speaker 1: it was played out in real time on the news,
Speaker 1: So you think that the people that are supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing the right thing or doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: So you want to tell your kid like, hey, listen
Speaker 1: to what they're telling you, and not like, hey, don't
Speaker 1: listen to what they're saying. Get out of there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go jump off the side of the ship. Yeah
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, Like that's you can totally understand where
Speaker 2: she's coming from. But I can also understand that that's
Speaker 2: her greatest regret.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I just hated it for her or to,
Speaker 1: you know, all these years later to still feel that way,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So eight fifty five am, ten minutes after the
Speaker 2: ship turned and started to list, the Sewall crew makes
Speaker 2: their first distress call. Three minutes earlier. The very first
Speaker 2: distress call from the Sewall was made by one of
Speaker 2: the students. Yeah, they called one one nine, which is
Speaker 2: nine one one in Korea, and they said like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm on a sinking ship, Please send some help. And
Speaker 2: at first you could tell the one one nine operators
Speaker 2: like wait, what are you saying? Yeah, yeah, because they
Speaker 2: were essentially like, so, wait, you're on a ship that
Speaker 2: you're seeing a ship that's sinking, And the guys like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm on a sinking chip like please send help. This
Speaker 2: was three minutes before the crew ever did anything, like
Speaker 2: like did anything about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they were ahead by three minutes. Over the
Speaker 1: next half hour, there were a lot of calls from
Speaker 1: the crew to all kinds of people. Coast Guard support
Speaker 1: obviously they called. The crew was like, hey, we're trapped
Speaker 1: on the bridge. We don't know what's going on with
Speaker 1: the passengers. The ship is definitely sinking, So there was
Speaker 1: no ambiguity about what was going on. And they said
Speaker 1: to the coast Guard, like should we evacuate and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: it's a captain's decision. That's why you have a captain
Speaker 1: on board, basically, And that was over the next half
Speaker 1: hour from those initial calls. In the middle of this,
Speaker 1: at nine fourteen, they made the crew made distress calls
Speaker 1: to local fishing boats like hey, anybody that's near us,
Speaker 1: we need help right now, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: showed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there were some that had already showed
Speaker 2: up even before the call. And half of the people
Speaker 2: who were rescued, who survived the sinking of the Siu
Speaker 2: All Ferry were rescued by civilian fishing boats. Yes, in
Speaker 2: ten minutes. Ten minutes spanned half of the survivors were rescued.
Speaker 2: This was twenty thirty I saw as much as forty minutes,
Speaker 2: although I don't think that's right. Before the coast Guard
Speaker 2: even showed up. These fishing boats were there rescuing people.
Speaker 2: The first coast Guard boat, and I think the only
Speaker 2: coast Guard boat bear that in mind, showed up at
Speaker 2: nine thirty five. So this is fifty minutes after the
Speaker 2: first the turn, and what forty minutes after the call
Speaker 2: for help. The coast guard finally shows up. The ship
Speaker 2: is at sixty degrees. Now, this is that's nuts. You're
Speaker 2: like standing on the wall essentially, and the coast guard
Speaker 2: did what the coast guard is supposed to do. The
Speaker 2: crew did what they were supposed to do. The coast
Speaker 2: guard evacuated the crew from the bridge and got away
Speaker 2: from the ship. The crew left the ship, including the
Speaker 2: captain who there's a very clear image of him being
Speaker 2: assisted off of the bridge and onto the coastguard boat,
Speaker 2: who had not very importantly given the order to evacuate
Speaker 2: the ship. He abandoned ship and did not explain to
Speaker 2: the passengers that they needed to get off of the ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the worst thing a boat captain can do.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to be the last person off, and this
Speaker 1: guy was one of the first people off in his underwear.
Speaker 1: This you know, you said the crew all got off,
Speaker 1: It wasn't everybody. I think there were fourteen crew members
Speaker 1: that were rescued at nine to forty seven am. A
Speaker 1: few crew members, to their credit, went down with the
Speaker 1: ship and were doing everything they could, so they were
Speaker 1: you know, there were some heroic actions going on a
Speaker 1: helicopter shows up around this time starts to rescue passengers,
Speaker 1: but again a helicopter rescue. They're getting people off like
Speaker 1: one at a time, lifting them to safety, and they
Speaker 1: still these kids are still being told to stay in
Speaker 1: their room. So it's not like everyone was on top
Speaker 1: of the deck or you know, wherever they could be seen. Right,
Speaker 1: most of them are still in their room. And then
Speaker 1: they had life rafts. They had life rafts for like
Speaker 1: eleven hundred people. There were forty four life rafts could
Speaker 1: carry twenty five people each, and only one of them
Speaker 1: was automatically deployed.
Speaker 2: Right, So there is a point where the water is
Speaker 2: starting to rush in so much that even somebody who's
Speaker 2: been raised their entire life in a collective of society
Speaker 2: to just follow the orders of the people in charge,
Speaker 2: are going to leave their cabin, are going to stop
Speaker 2: listening and leave their cabin. That finally happened, but by
Speaker 2: this time it was much too late for most of them.
Speaker 2: It's very, very hard to get out of a sinking
Speaker 2: ship because the water rushes into every area that has
Speaker 2: air to fill it up. There's a suction mechanism that
Speaker 2: can create the movement of the water makes it less dense,
Speaker 2: so you are likelier to sink. It's very hard to
Speaker 2: get out of the inside of a sinking large ship,
Speaker 2: and so there were stories of some of the survivors
Speaker 2: seeing their friends like trying to get out and then
Speaker 2: see them just get sucked back into the ship in
Speaker 2: the water. And that was it. So the sew wall
Speaker 2: within just a couple hours chuck. It went from completely
Speaker 2: above water to totally sunk, totally submerged, and there was
Speaker 2: still three hundred and four people trapped inside when it sank.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that single Coastguard boat, rescue boat that was there,
Speaker 1: it sat there and watched the whole thing happen. In fact,
Speaker 1: worse than that, those fishermen in the fishing boats that
Speaker 1: were there pulling passengers out, the coast Guard ordered them
Speaker 1: to retreat and to get out of there. Of those
Speaker 1: four hundred and seventy six I think you said three
Speaker 1: hundred and four were trapped inside, only three of those
Speaker 1: were crew members, and there were young crew members who
Speaker 1: stayed aboard to try and help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two of them were an engaged couple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we're getting pretty worked up in upset,
Speaker 1: so maybe we should take a break and come back
Speaker 1: after this with more on the disaster.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll do that, I think you said earlier, Chuck,
Speaker 2: we're back. By the way that the sinking was broadcast
Speaker 2: on TV, essentially all of the news just covered it
Speaker 2: constantly the entire day and then some and there was
Speaker 2: a lot of misinformation that was coming out. You can
Speaker 2: actually hear where it began, Like very early on with
Speaker 2: the ship almost fully capsized and mostly sunk, one of
Speaker 2: the coastguard guys says, yeah, everybody's safe, they're all they're
Speaker 2: all evacuated. So the families who were watching this essentially
Speaker 2: had and assurance that their kids were safe, they were alive.
Speaker 2: As the ship was sinking, and very quickly it turned
Speaker 2: they learned that no, this is not the case. That
Speaker 2: a substantial number two hundred and fifty of them were
Speaker 2: now dead, were now maybe even not dead, but trapped
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the Yellow Sea in a boat
Speaker 2: and we're going to die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, seventy five of the students made it through. So
Speaker 1: the families, you know, almost immediately were like, we need
Speaker 1: to hold someone accountable, We need some answers for what
Speaker 1: happened out there, and they never really got answers. So
Speaker 1: when that happened. They really went hard into raising good trouble,
Speaker 1: becoming activists. Basically, they had candlelight vigils. They drew together
Speaker 1: thousands of people at these things. They camped outside of
Speaker 1: the President's residence, which is the Blue House in South Korea.
Speaker 1: A lot of them shade their heads for publicity. They
Speaker 1: went on hunger strikes, they were going to marches and
Speaker 1: speaking at rallies. And because of this and this thing
Speaker 1: just seems like it keeps getting worse and worse and
Speaker 1: worse it does. South Korea didn't say like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: need to really get to the bottom of this. All
Speaker 1: these parents are devastated, they lost their children, so let's
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of it. Instead, these right wing
Speaker 1: websites started putting out and commentators start putting out stories
Speaker 1: about kind of what happened in Newtown, Connecticut, like putting
Speaker 1: out stories about the families, accusing them of being North
Speaker 1: Korean agents trying to get rich off this tragedy. Not
Speaker 1: only that the official government started trailing some of them,
Speaker 1: started staking out their houses, started tapping phones, trying to
Speaker 1: dig up dirt to use against these parents of children
Speaker 1: who were killed by neglige Yes.
Speaker 2: They went to great length and spent a lot of
Speaker 2: money and effort to deflect the focused attention and blame
Speaker 2: from itself, the government and parents onto whoever yes on
Speaker 2: the parents. It's the most cynical evil thing you could
Speaker 2: possibly do as a government in a situation like this
Speaker 2: when you're largely to blame. And so the these families
Speaker 2: didn't stop as they were vilified. There was like a
Speaker 2: huge cleaving between the formerly fully sympathetic and on their
Speaker 2: side public and these families because now all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, wait a minute, are they trying to
Speaker 2: get rich? And the media was fully culpable in this.
Speaker 2: They were instrumentalized. I've seen it described by the government
Speaker 2: went along fully and so whatever the government wanted them
Speaker 2: to say, they would just have some prosecutors, have some
Speaker 2: journalists to hang out off the record, feed them a
Speaker 2: bunch of stuff, and then the next thing that would
Speaker 2: be the new news cycle. So the government was really
Speaker 2: able to deliberately manage all of this, this tragedy, and
Speaker 2: one of the things they did was scapegoat the families
Speaker 2: or get them ostracized at least, and the families did
Speaker 2: not This didn't shut them up at all. If anything,
Speaker 2: it created even more activists and deep in the activists,
Speaker 2: activism in the ones that were already kind of radicalized
Speaker 2: by this, And so over time it became clear that
Speaker 2: there was a bunch of people to blame, and the
Speaker 2: parents were not in any of the categories.
Speaker 1: No, there's basically kind of five buckets of people who
Speaker 1: failed here, obviously the captain and the crew, except for
Speaker 1: the three that stayed behind, who were you know, commendable obviously,
Speaker 1: but you know, they, like we said, they didn't evacuate anybody,
Speaker 1: no announcements to evacuate. Everyone's told to stay there while
Speaker 1: this thing sank. And the other thing too is not
Speaker 1: having that cargo security. You know, you shouldn't have cars
Speaker 1: and trucks sliding around and construction equipment sliding around when
Speaker 1: you make a sharp turn. Yeah, and making that sharp
Speaker 1: turn was also a big error.
Speaker 2: The coast guard also was very Uh. I don't think
Speaker 2: they were ever off the hook. They were blamed from
Speaker 2: the moment the whole thing happened to the today. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they did not do almost anything. It's just astounding the
Speaker 2: little that they did.
Speaker 1: That's what I don't get, Like why why.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. But I do know that as
Speaker 2: a direct result of this, the coast Guard, the North
Speaker 2: Korean Coast Guard was dissolved. Everybody got removed, like, sorry,
Speaker 2: there's no coast guard anymore. We have to figure out
Speaker 2: a different way to do this. That's how incompetent and negligent.
Speaker 2: Their response was that the Coastguard was disbanded because yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so I don't know why, but that's that was the result.
Speaker 2: That's how bad it was.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think that's one of the more magning,
Speaker 1: maddening things is even when they have done follow up
Speaker 1: with all this, I don't think anyone ever said like, well,
Speaker 1: there was a communication breakdown here and it happened because
Speaker 1: of this. It was and when you're listening to the
Speaker 1: comms in real time, it's just it's infuriating.
Speaker 2: Oh. It was like anybody who had a finger pointed
Speaker 2: at them, what they did was just turn and pointed
Speaker 2: at the next person. Yeah, there was no like account
Speaker 2: no accountability.
Speaker 1: Well put, the ferry company was another bucket. Obviously their
Speaker 1: profits were more important than the safety of their passengers.
Speaker 1: Was overloaded. Like we said, apparently their emergency training wasn't
Speaker 1: very robust, and the workers that they hired were apparently
Speaker 1: low paid contract workers. They didn't have a lot of experience.
Speaker 2: Right, So the ferry companies cutting every corner they can
Speaker 2: to maximize profit and putting profit ahead of passenger safety
Speaker 2: by a lot, right. The port inspectors too, they didn't
Speaker 2: do their job. They did their job by looking at
Speaker 2: what's called freeboard, which is the distance between the ship
Speaker 2: I guess the main deck and the water. And they
Speaker 2: basically just eye balled it and said, oh, it's not
Speaker 2: sitting too low in the water, so I guess it
Speaker 2: passes inspection. From what I understand, they did not go
Speaker 2: aboard the ship and actually like visually see any of
Speaker 2: the cargo. That was the inspection they did for a
Speaker 2: passenger ferry. And it gets even worse because you might say, like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: I mean it was like it wasn't too low in
Speaker 2: the water. Who cares if it was overloaded. The reason
Speaker 2: it wasn't too too far or too deep into the
Speaker 2: water was because the ferry company had scuttled ballast to
Speaker 2: use that weight for more cargo. And not only did
Speaker 2: that was that just highly illegal, but the lack of
Speaker 2: ballast made the ship less seaworthy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it made it very unstable. So something like a
Speaker 1: hard turn all of a sudden, you're going down, you know.
Speaker 2: Isn't Isn't that insane?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy. The South Korean government is the fifth
Speaker 1: bucket because, as you'll see here coming up in the
Speaker 1: next section, they had a terrible response to everything after
Speaker 1: it happened. There were about I guess it's been about
Speaker 1: twelve years since it's happened. Like you said, I guess
Speaker 1: it's gonna be on the anniversary that this is released.
Speaker 1: But there have been nine different government investigations and inquiries,
Speaker 1: and we'll go over the litany of arrest I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the only sort of I mean, you don't want
Speaker 1: to call it a good thing, but at least they
Speaker 1: a lot of people serve time for this, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they definitely did. One of them was the captain.
Speaker 2: His name is Lee June Siak, and he was put
Speaker 2: on trout for negligent homicide. His defense was that he
Speaker 2: was stunned and confused, yeah, by the accident, and he
Speaker 2: just did he wasn't able to make decisions because he
Speaker 2: was so stunned and confused. That was his defense.
Speaker 1: It's not captain, that's not what you want to hear
Speaker 1: out of a captain.
Speaker 2: No, for sure, the I guess. He also gave conflicting testimony.
Speaker 2: In one, he lied and said that, oh, he did
Speaker 2: give the order to evacuate, but his crew didn't listen.
Speaker 2: I think he even lied and said that he used
Speaker 2: a bullhorn to tell everyone to evacuate. He definitely did
Speaker 2: not do any of those. Later, he gave a somewhat
Speaker 2: more rational and sensible explanation. He said, essentially, there's very
Speaker 2: strong currents in this area. That's true, the water is
Speaker 2: very cold. It was like fifty seven degrees farent height
Speaker 2: or I think seventeen degrees celsia, so I don't remember.
Speaker 2: Pretty cold. And that also he didn't want people jumping
Speaker 2: in the water before there was anyone around to rescue them. Right,
Speaker 2: All of that makes a little bit of sense, but
Speaker 2: none of it justifies or excuses or explains never giving
Speaker 2: the evacuation order, abandoning ship while it was still fully
Speaker 2: loaded with passengers. Like, there's no way to defend his actions,
Speaker 2: even if some of his thinking was potentially reasonable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said that he didn't know. He claimed to
Speaker 1: not know the status of the passengers when he abandoned ship,
Speaker 1: which in admission, you know, in and of itself, is awful.
Speaker 1: And he went to trial. Of course, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, a lot of the trials here
Speaker 1: at the end, but his trial was the most sort
Speaker 1: of because you know, it was on TV, the captain,
Speaker 1: you know, coming out in his underwear and getting on
Speaker 1: that it was it was just laid bare like you know,
Speaker 1: in all ways for everyone to see with their own eyeballs.
Speaker 1: So that was the trial that was really sort of
Speaker 1: the most striking publicly, I think. And he was sentenced
Speaker 1: to thirty six years in prison. Fourteen members of the crew,
Speaker 1: the fourteen that evacuated, they got sentenced as well, from
Speaker 1: five to thirty years, but they appealed the verdict and
Speaker 1: made it worse. He eventually got a life sentence out
Speaker 1: of this, and some of the crew members had their
Speaker 1: sentences dial back a little bit because they were acting
Speaker 1: on captain's orders.
Speaker 2: Right. A lot of the families were like, let's give
Speaker 2: him the death penalty. Even though South Korea hadn't used
Speaker 2: the death penalty since nineteen ninety seven. They believe that
Speaker 2: this was a prime candidate for the death penalty. So
Speaker 2: early on chuck really early on is the government's just
Speaker 2: doing anything it can to deflect blame or responsibility. They
Speaker 2: zero it in on one of the owners of Cheonghijin Marine,
Speaker 2: which owned the ferry. He was a billionaire named yubjung Un.
Speaker 2: He's seventy three. His family was the co owner of
Speaker 2: the company and also a bunch of other companies, And
Speaker 2: the government did the same thing that it later did
Speaker 2: with the families. It basically started feeding secretly info to
Speaker 2: the media, and the media turned around and reported on it,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, I saw this graph of
Speaker 2: you know, day by day news reports on the Seawall
Speaker 2: ferry sinking. They start to go down as the reports
Speaker 2: on yubjong Un go up into there's nothing almost on
Speaker 2: the sinking and everything on this billionaire who's now fled
Speaker 2: and is on the run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he goes on the lamb. He's a very
Speaker 1: well known guy in South Korea at the time, even
Speaker 1: before this, mainly because well, I mean, he was a
Speaker 1: billionaire businessman, so that's one, but more so for being
Speaker 1: the founder of the Evangelical Baptist Church in Korea, so
Speaker 1: he's someone that's well known. They issue an arrest warrant.
Speaker 1: About a month later, he had fled. By this point,
Speaker 1: there's a nationwide man hunt and for many many months.
Speaker 1: What we learned after the fact was he was hiding
Speaker 1: in a panic room at his vacation house. And then
Speaker 1: that summer in July they found him in the woods. Basically,
Speaker 1: he was in a plumb orchard, had killed himself. His
Speaker 1: body was badly decomposed at that point, so he, you know,
Speaker 1: the most cowardly thing he could do. He fled, hid,
Speaker 1: and then took his own life to avoid responsibility.
Speaker 2: Yea, there's something I mean, even though he was very
Speaker 2: much made a scapegoat by the government, that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: he was innocent or not responsible. He just wasn't the
Speaker 2: only one responsible. And then one other thing that makes
Speaker 2: this whole government thing even more cynical. They found his
Speaker 2: body a full month before they publicly acknowledged it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because they kept he was just such a great way
Speaker 2: to distract the public from the actual problem, the tragedy.
Speaker 2: And when they finally did release that they had found
Speaker 2: him and the manhunt was over, it was because there
Speaker 2: was a really unpopular bill that would allow hospitals to
Speaker 2: make more profits over patient care. That was making the news,
Speaker 2: so they bumped that out of the way with the
Speaker 2: news that this guy's body had been found.
Speaker 1: Yeah, should we take our final break.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good idea.
Speaker 1: All right, We're going to take another break and talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about the fallout right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, so we're back. We have not talked yet
Speaker 1: about the South Korean government, you know, like we said,
Speaker 1: this thing was on TV for everyone to kind of see.
Speaker 1: The one thing they didn't see was their president Park Gun.
Speaker 1: He was nowhere. She didn't emerge. There was about a
Speaker 1: seven hour period where she didn't come out of her
Speaker 1: residence to address anything going on. When she finally did
Speaker 1: come out, she didn't seem like she was even briefed
Speaker 1: on what was going on. She was getting a lot
Speaker 1: of the basic facts of the disaster wrong. She didn't
Speaker 1: understand that there were students trapped inside the boat. It
Speaker 1: was just it was a real mess from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and they still don't know. I believe they sealed the
Speaker 1: national security documents that have you know, what she was
Speaker 1: doing during those seven hours. They sealed those documents for
Speaker 1: at least thirty years, so no one's ever going to
Speaker 1: know what the president of that country was doing for
Speaker 1: those seven hours.
Speaker 2: Now, the one thing that an investigation turned up that
Speaker 2: she definitely was doing was the two hours before she
Speaker 2: finally went on TV to talk about this crisis, she
Speaker 2: was getting her hair done.
Speaker 1: That's right. I remember hearing that.
Speaker 2: Hours before that. They're like, it's sealed. It's the most
Speaker 2: suspicious thing I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's so fishy. And them sealing it for
Speaker 1: thirty years just like puts the official fishy stamp on
Speaker 1: it all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's bad enough if they're just keeping
Speaker 2: it quiet, but to seal it for thirty years. What
Speaker 2: was she like having sex with Satan himself or something?
Speaker 2: What was going on.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden. It's a South Park movie pretty much.
Speaker 2: Oh, come on, guy.
Speaker 1: So obviously the you know, politics or politics, So the
Speaker 1: political opposition is going to just jump on this moment
Speaker 1: and say, you know, the you know they're behind the families.
Speaker 1: Of course, if you're on the other side of the
Speaker 1: political spectrum. They wanted her to step down. They mounted
Speaker 1: a big nationwide sort of protest saying that she needs
Speaker 1: to get out of here, and in twenty seventeen, she
Speaker 1: became the first South Korean president to be impeached and
Speaker 1: removed from office and was convicted. But the conviction had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with this. She was implicated in a
Speaker 1: bribery scheme. But they do credit the Seawall probe and
Speaker 1: the backlash against her to just sort of kicking off
Speaker 1: all of this investigatory stuff that led to that conviction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Park family in fact had pretty they were
Speaker 2: not very good at governing. Not only was she the
Speaker 2: first president to be removed from office in South Korea history,
Speaker 2: her father was a dictator who led a coup and
Speaker 2: took power until nineteen seventy nine when he was assassinated.
Speaker 2: So not exactly the family you want running your country
Speaker 2: after all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, her prison sentence is twenty years, but she was
Speaker 1: pardoned in twenty twenty two by her successor. They said that,
Speaker 1: you know, she wasn't doing well health wise, and that's
Speaker 1: you know, in most normal times politics wise, a lot
Speaker 1: of times even the opposition will like issue a pardon
Speaker 1: against the person there against you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's kind of one of those like
Speaker 2: we need to keep that custom in order because it
Speaker 2: keep ticks. I've got eyes on the oval office four
Speaker 2: years from No, and I don't want to go to jail.
Speaker 1: Wait you do, yeah, might as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, same thing. So here's the thing. It's been
Speaker 2: twelve years and it is not clear what caused the
Speaker 2: sinking of the Sioux Waal ferry.
Speaker 1: Well, you don't know, like why it turned. I mean
Speaker 1: in that video, I don't know if this was the thing.
Speaker 1: But when it shows that truck slaming against the wall,
Speaker 1: something burst and water starts coming in. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what they don't know why they made that short turn
Speaker 1: to begin with.
Speaker 2: Did I send this to you? I don't. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you saw it. But the third mat in charge,
Speaker 2: when she was tried, she testified that she ordered the
Speaker 2: quartermaster to turn the rudder, turned the wheel, huh, to
Speaker 2: avoid an oncoming ship.
Speaker 1: That was oh okay, I didn't see that part.
Speaker 2: And like it's nowhere like you like it was. I
Speaker 2: found it buried and referenced in some one article. Like
Speaker 2: it's not like a big thing. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: Because it was confirmed by on land radar that there
Speaker 2: was a trail out right after the ship turned, going
Speaker 2: the other direction of what seemed to be another ship.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that that might have been the reason, yes.
Speaker 2: The reason they turned. And then she said, well, the
Speaker 2: quartermaster turned it way too hard. And again, like you said,
Speaker 2: these were inexperienced, low paid contract workers actually doing the ship,
Speaker 2: so it's quite possible the quartermaster just turned it too hard.
Speaker 2: He also said. The quartermaster in his defense said, I
Speaker 2: didn't turn it that hard. That ship was not made
Speaker 2: to even turn five degrees like the third may ordered
Speaker 2: me too. Like it just kept going and skidding essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we mentioned the crew and the captain
Speaker 1: that got and the president that all got prison sentences.
Speaker 1: The owner of that ferry company had taken his own life,
Speaker 1: but I think it was his son that was the CEO.
Speaker 1: He was convicted on accidental homicide charges but also an
Speaker 1: embezzlement thing, so he got a seven year term for
Speaker 1: both of those. There was a shipping official that you know,
Speaker 1: the ones who said, hey, you're fine to go without
Speaker 1: checking its cargo. He was sentenced to three years. A
Speaker 1: couple of workers with the private company that overloaded the
Speaker 1: ship to begin with, they got two years the ferry
Speaker 1: company and this one. They ended up getting a pretty
Speaker 1: good payout. There was a civil wrongful death civil suit
Speaker 1: and in twenty eighteen court ordered the government and the
Speaker 1: ferry company to pay the families what would be about
Speaker 1: five hundred thirty thousand dollars per victim and American dollars,
Speaker 1: which is about six hundred million one right, but pay
Speaker 1: you know, I mentioned the payout being pretty good just
Speaker 1: because they deserved it. But nothing, you know, there isn't
Speaker 1: a financial compensation for something like that, you know.
Speaker 2: No, And to their credit, they are still quite organized
Speaker 2: and still agitating for answers. We didn't say, but they
Speaker 2: actually raised the fairy and then dry doct it. It's
Speaker 2: pretty astounding that they were able to get that thing
Speaker 2: out of the water, out of I think one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty feet of water, and they were able to
Speaker 2: recover more bodies, they were able to recover belongings to
Speaker 2: the kids, very important stuff. But they still are like,
Speaker 2: we have no idea what caused this, what the actual
Speaker 2: cause was. Yeah, but they like it took President park
Speaker 2: to be impeached before they raised that thing because she
Speaker 2: was essentially sitting on it. She didn't want it to
Speaker 2: make the news cycle again. But they're still together. They
Speaker 2: didn't get their money and like and say like whatever.
Speaker 2: Another group were charged with negligence and incompetence. They were
Speaker 2: eleven Coast Guard officers. They all stood trial. One of
Speaker 2: them I think he was the commander of that one
Speaker 2: Coastguard boat that was there on the scene. He served
Speaker 2: a four year sentence. From what I saw, Yep.
Speaker 1: There was also the bucket of the illegal surveillance that happened,
Speaker 1: the obstruction that happened when the government was trying to
Speaker 1: deflect you know, basically all attention on themselves. So from
Speaker 1: that bucket, six officers with the Defense Security Command, which
Speaker 1: is their military intelligence agency, were convicted of illegally surveilling
Speaker 1: the families, you know, the victims families. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: two of the president's top aides were actually acquitted of
Speaker 1: interfering with investigations, but they were they were tried, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 2: And like I said, the grieving the parents that became activists.
Speaker 2: They created essentially a couple of groups that both have
Speaker 2: four sixteen in the name, that are that are there
Speaker 2: to essentially get the truth revealed, make sure that everyone
Speaker 2: who hasn't been punished is still punished. They also have
Speaker 2: managed to get the actual classrooms removed from the High
Speaker 2: school and reinstalled I think at the Department of Education,
Speaker 2: and it's now a memorial museum, the four sixteen Memorial classroom,
Speaker 2: and there's multiple classrooms that are just empty and there
Speaker 2: they redid them exactly the way that they were left
Speaker 2: when the students left to go on their field trip.
Speaker 2: And it's eerie. I saw one picture in the April
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen wall calendars still up.
Speaker 1: Jeez.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks really stirring.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's brutal. This sadly was not you know, the
Speaker 1: last disaster to strike South Korea just a few years
Speaker 1: ago in twenty twenty two, in October, one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty nine young people died in a crowd rush during Hallow.
Speaker 1: It's known as the e Taiwan crowd crush. And they
Speaker 1: you know, at least there were parents from the seawall
Speaker 1: disaster that came forward to get together with these parents
Speaker 1: and say, hey, you've got a friend in me and
Speaker 1: we can be together in this activism, you know, so
Speaker 1: like join up with us because we're already going strong.
Speaker 1: And that's what happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I guess when I left off, the main
Speaker 2: point of what they're agitating for is better government regulation
Speaker 2: for public safety responses, for things like shipping requirements, like
Speaker 2: just basically repealing some of the deregulation that led to
Speaker 2: these unsafe conditions that allowed that crowd crush that happened,
Speaker 2: that allowed the seawall ferry to sync without people being
Speaker 2: enough people being rescued. Yeah, so yeah, hats off to
Speaker 2: them for continuing what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sad, tough, tough, tough one. I remember this going down.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing the images of that captain coming off
Speaker 1: that boat in his underwear and just thinking like, what
Speaker 1: is this guy doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we talked about that. It's one crowd crush
Speaker 2: in the crowd Crush episode.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: I also just want to make sure everybody goes and
Speaker 2: watches in the absence that New Yorker documentary. It's like
Speaker 2: less than thirty minutes long, and it's really something agreed well,
Speaker 2: Chuck said, yeah and agreed to. That means it's time
Speaker 2: for listener mail.
Speaker 1: This is not a sad listener mail, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: end on a little brighter note. It's about deodorant. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I listened to the anti Perspont deodorant episode and I
Speaker 1: wanted to share this with your listenership if you and
Speaker 1: I guess you know Chris here is into standard deodorants
Speaker 1: and has some advice. Okay, if you mix equalish parts
Speaker 1: of coconut oil with baking soda to your favorite consistency,
Speaker 1: maybe if you have a favorite essential oil desired, you
Speaker 1: can drop that in there. It's frankly the best deodorant
Speaker 1: ever for those whose bodies laugh. Anything supposed to stop that.
Speaker 1: It is supposed to stop sweat, because personally this chick
Speaker 1: thinks of hot dogs and sweats, so the capability of
Speaker 1: it completely masking body odor is remarkable, at least with
Speaker 1: my stubborn stink. And we get a cheers from Chris,
Speaker 1: and Chris has a little ps. If you get irritated
Speaker 1: from the baking soda, maybe just add some more coconut
Speaker 1: oil until your skin doesn't complain.
Speaker 2: Nice, Thanks Chris, good stuff. I do have to warn
Speaker 2: you do not just willy nilly put a bunch of
Speaker 2: essential oil in there, though, Like I found that out
Speaker 2: the hard way when I guess poison ivy in U.
Speaker 2: He's like, just put some oil on some essential oil line.
Speaker 2: I don't remember. I just put essential oil on my
Speaker 2: skin just started burning immediately, and she said, no, you're
Speaker 2: supposed to mix it with like other oil first.
Speaker 1: Why didn't that? Why didn't you call Emily? But you
Speaker 1: may knew that. Yeah, you gotta really dilute that stuff.
Speaker 1: A little goes a long way. So I would imagine
Speaker 1: a couple of drops in your deodorant concoction would be plea.
Speaker 2: It's like the old slogan says, a couple of drops tops.
Speaker 2: If you want to get in touch with us, like
Speaker 2: Chris did, send us an email like Chris did. You
Speaker 2: can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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