Fire destroys South Korean landmark
Fire destroys South Korean landmark By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press An overnight fire destroyed a 610-year-old landmark that was considered the top national treasure, officials said Monday. Police said the cause of the blaze was unclear but one official said arson was suspected. The fire broke out Sunday night and burned down the wooden structure at the top of the Namdaemun gate that once formed part of a wall that encircled the capital. Some 360 firefighters fought to bring the blaze under control, according to Lee Sang-joon, an official with the National Emergency Management Agency. No one was injured, he said. Lee said that arson was suspected in the blaze. However, Kim Young-soo, the head of a police station in central Seoul handling the case, told a televised news conference said it was too early to make that conclusion. The South Korean government opened the landmark gate, officially named Sungnyemun, to public in 2006 for first time in nearly a century. The gate had been off-limits to the public since Japanese colonial authorities built an electric tramway nearby in 1907. Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula in 1910-45. The gate was renovated in the 1960s and again in 2005.
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(There are
bad people in the pistachio business.)
TigerLikesR Jet J Tamar1973; All
Godzilla’s fault?????
(&We are Freepers, all your media belong to us, resistence is futile&)
To: TigerLikesRooster
(President Hillary!? Clinton? Time to invest in body bags. Again...)
To: TigerLikesRooster
Any update?
(There are
bad people in the pistachio business.)
To: nuconvert
To: nuconvert
An overnight fire destroyed a 610-year-old landmark
610 years-old.
To: nuconvert
(&Ron Paul won every debate!& Rudy Giuliani)
To: nuconvert
(Agents Ramos and Campean are in prison at this very moment..
(A &Concerned Citizen&.)
To: BGHater
Please post a larger picture.
To: BGHater
Rather large, but we certainly get to see the detail
(There are
bad people in the pistachio business.)
To: SpaceBar
almost like being there
(There are
bad people in the pistachio business.)
To: kinoxi
Truly a sad loss. The roof supports are marvels of ingenuity and engineering in allowing for shifting during the local earthquakes. You can see them in the pictures just below the roof support beams (they look like little stairs).
To: BGHater
Please limit images to 20 Gig...
(President Hillary!? Clinton? Time to invest in body bags. Again...)
To: nuconvert
Bummer! I saw that gate several times when in Seoul for business. Hope they rebuild it.
To: null and void
Sorry to the dial up and such, spoiled with FIOS.
(&Ron Paul won every debate!& Rudy Giuliani)
To: 17th Miss Regt
I’m interested to see what you are pointing out. If you could only be more specific. This structure lasted. I would have loved to have seen it.
To: BGHater
We’ve all done it one time or another. At least the subject was worthy of the bandwidth.
(President Hillary!? Clinton? Time to invest in body bags. Again...)
SevenofNine
There are some eye-witness testimony which says that they saw someone going up the gate building carrying what appeared to an oil container. There are some mentally unstable homeless people who roam around this gate, after it made accessible to general public. The president elect Lee Myung-bak dismantled the security fence around it and created a mini park around it, and people were able to even go through the gate itself. It looked good, but it is a step which seriously compromised its security and safety. This is not a prop for amusement park. This gate survived three full-scale war (Japanese invasion in 16th century, Chinese(Manchu) invasion in 17th century, and Korean War in 1950~53,) more or less unscathed. Now it was burned down during the peacetime. This is the serious tragedy. The main responsibility lies with President-elect Lee Myung-bak. He is the one who opened it to public unrestricted without proper security. The security of the gate was reportedly subcontracted to a private security company. No police presence here. Lee always go for whatever looks good and grand at the moment, and do not care about its consequence or aftermath. He did it because it was another good political show. He may be a president elect from an ostensibly conservative party, but he is no more than a corrupt and unscrupulous figure which embodies all the darkside of construction industry where he workd for decades. He is not much of an improvement over Roh Moo-hyun. Even now, he is busy stacking the rank of his party with former leftwing activists, and spineless RINO types who only care about money. He said he does not care much about ideology. However, the most serious problem is that he has no conscience or scruples, even though he claimed to be a Christian. This disaster is symptomatic of his way of doing business. This would be what will happen if he is allowed to do things unimpeded. He will embark on grand projects which look good, sound good, but fraught with many dangers and pitfalls, which people have to pay for dearly later. I am afraid he would allow leftwing resurgence. Anybody out there who might have the impression that he is another Sarkozy in S. Korea, think again. He is much closer to Bill Clinton without his seductive skill. The only difference is that he chose conservative party to launch his political ambition.
(kim jong-il, chia head, ppogri, In Grim Reaper we trust)
To: nuconvert
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/_18668.html
Arson Suspected in Namdaemun Fire ... According to firefighters, Namdaemun did not seem to sustain major damage other than minor burning to the area underneath the roof.
Police suspect someone deliberately started the fire as a taxi driver, identified only by his surname Lee, said he saw a man in his 50s go up the stairs of the gate with a shopping bag, while he was waiting to pick up a customer in the nearby area. Lee said he then saw a spark like a firework and reported it to police, adding the man came down the stairs afterwards. The taxi driver said he drove around looking for the man but could not find him....
(I do renounce Hillary! and all her pomps and works.)
To: kinoxi
The roof is supported by lots of what look like upside down wood piles. They are very effective at &uncoupling& earthquake motion from the roof, allowing it to ride out the motion A fixed roof would shear and tear the walls down. It is a very clever and well reasoned out solution, that allows the use of readily available materials. We&ve only recently caught on to this concept and are now building some structures on huge rubber shock absorbers.
(President Hillary!? Clinton? Time to invest in body bags. Again...)
To: Peelod
The photo at the top of the thread seems to indicate that it’s pretty much completely destroyed except for the earthwork foundation.
To: null and void
Built effectively to withstand nature. Some idiot burned it down by accident.
To: kinoxi
Or deliberately. We are our own worst enemies.
(President Hillary!? Clinton? Time to invest in body bags. Again...)
To: TigerLikesRooster
It sucks that landmark over 600 years old burns sucks
(&We are Freepers, all your media belong to us, resistence is futile&)
To: SpaceBar
(kim jong-il, chia head, ppogri, In Grim Reaper we trust)
To: TigerLikesRooster
There seem to be conflicting reports on how badly it was damaged. How bad is it?
(There are
bad people in the pistachio business.)
To: null and void
To: nuconvert
How bad is it?
See the photo in #26.
(kim jong-il, chia head, ppogri, In Grim Reaper we trust)
To: TigerLikesRooster
(There are
bad people in the pistachio business.)
To: kinoxi
But some stupid with a flare gun,Burned the place to the ground.
Sorry, couldn’t help it.
To: SpaceBar
Really sad. This is one of the few remaining artifacts that the Japanese didn’t deliberately destroy during their reign.
(With friends like the media, who needs enemas ?)
To: nuconvert
The authorities at the scene now worry that the second collapse could occur. Apparently the part of wooden structure still standing also sustained serious fire damage, and could give away anytime.
(kim jong-il, chia head, ppogri, In Grim Reaper we trust)
To: TigerLikesRooster
Oh how sad
(There are
bad people in the pistachio business.)
It could have happened. Flare materials haven&t ignited as readily in my experience however. This wasn&t a dried out field.
To: TigerLikesRooster
Thanks for the pics. It appears to be little more than a smoldering ruin. Obviously a great cultural loss.
To: SevenofNine
Wrong country.
To: nuconvert
What a shame. They should of course rebuild it.
(Elections have consequences.)
To: BGHater
(Elections have consequences.)
To: BGHater
&.img src=”link”height=x&
(Elections have consequences.)
Saved me from sayin it.
(I carry a gun because I can't carry a cop.)
You might be interested in this.
It’s a shame.
To: TigerLikesRooster
What a terrible loss.
To: rdl6989
On my way to work this morning, I caught the tail end of a news cast from a car radio. It said something like, &damage...., more safety measure to old cultural site.& I thought some less important site had fire again, an old temple in some remote mountain region. Boy, am I shocked to find out later that it is the most important heritage site in Seoul? Right in the middle of the city.
(kim jong-il, chia head, ppogri, In Grim Reaper we trust)
To: TigerLikesRooster
40 years ago After the Korean War (50 years ago) 80 years ago 100 years ago 120 years ago
(kim jong-il, chia head, ppogri, In Grim Reaper we trust)
To: TigerLikesRooster
Thanks for the photos.
What a shame.
(Who would the terrorists vote for?)
TigerLikesRooster
The gate was renovated in the 1960s and again in 2005. I hope that means that there are good blueprints and photo documentation on hand, so it can be rebuilt.
What a marvelous treasure -- and what a terrible loss -- to all cultures! :-(
(&Allah&: Satan's current alias...)
To: TigerLikesRooster
If this had happened here arson/terrorism would have been ruled out while it was still burning. I suspect it was the center wing fuel tank that spontaneously ignited this South Gate. I wouldn't want to be a beggar found near this place after this incident. The protocol I remember for investigations in South Korea involved rounding up all of the nearby &street people& taking them into the questioning rooms and beating them with billy-clubs until somebody confessed. a lot of bones got broken during questioning and the interrogation rooms usually had bloodstains on the walls left there to encourage people to tell all they know quickly.
(Nancy Pelosi is known to the state of CA to render Viagra ineffective causing reproductive harm.)
To: Jet Jaguar
Seoul police believe the arsonist has dark hair and eyes and are 50% certain his last name is Kim or Lee. Just a hunch.
(Nancy Pelosi is known to the state of CA to render Viagra ineffective causing reproductive harm.)
To: P8riot
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky
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John RobinsonSouth Korean class trip to resort island turned into horror with sinking | The Japan Times
TOKYO (2 a.m.)
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Relatives of passengers aboard the sunken ferry Sewol pray as they wait for their missing loved ones at a port in Jindo, South Korea, on Monday. | AP
South Korean class trip to resort island turned into horror with sinking
It was supposed to be their last bit of teenage fun.
The realities of life would descend on the 325 students from Danwon High School, near Seoul, in the next school year in the form of cram time: nonstop study to prepare for South Korea’s notoriously tough university entrance exams.
A four-day field trip to Jeju, a volcanic island whose white beaches and waterfalls lure hundreds of school groups each spring, was the planned distraction. The students would travel on a five-level ferry named Sewol, meaning “time and tide.” More than two-thirds of the passengers were from Danwon, adding a feeling of camaraderie to the adventure.
Ko Hyun Suk, 16, spent the days before the trip shopping for clothes to wear on Jeju. The chance to take a trip for the first time with friends rather than family added to the excitement for the boy and his classmates, Ko’s mother said.
Not every Danwon student wanted to make the trip. Park Ji Yoon didn’t like ferries. She decided to go only after her family said she would regret it if she didn’t, her grandmother said.
Now Ji Yoon and 301 of her fellow passengers, most of them classmates, are among the dead and missing after the Sewol capsized and sank on Wednesday in water cold enough to induce unconsciousness within an hour or two of exposure.
The catastrophe, which first had President Park Geun-hye demanding “zero casualties” and then had her the target of wails and screams from parents angry at the constantly shifting information, has become South Korea’s worst maritime tragedy since 1970, when the sinking of the Namyoung ferry killed 323.
Wearing tracksuits
The students’ schedule had the plan laid out to the minute. They were to leave Ansan, where the school is located, at 4:30 p.m. last Tuesday and travel on buses to the port at Incheon, one hour away. They were on time when they boarded the Sewol: a long line of young people, some in gray-and-black uniforms and others in purple-and-white school tracksuits.
The 20-year-old Japan-made ferry was bought by Chonghaejin Marine Co. in 2012. The company enlarged it during a four-month expansion that added another deck, increasing the total capacity by 116 to 956, and adding more room for vehicles. The refit design allowed space for one fewer crew member than before.
Prosecutors are investigating whether the expansion played a role in the sinking by making the ferry unstable.
The student group was led by Danwon Vice Principal Kang Min-kyu, along with 13 administrators or teachers. Others on board included Yang In-seok, 48, transporting cargo to Jeju with three other delivery men. The husband-and-wife team of Hur Young-ki, 45, and Park Eun-kyung, 43, also were delivering cargo, in their case metal components for a construction company. Their truck carrying the material was parked below with the other vehicles.
Late departure
Among the staff, Choi Chan-yeol, 57, worked in the kitchen. Crew member Oh Young-seok, also 57, was a steersman, authorized to pilot the ship. On the bridge, Capt. Lee Joon-seok, 68, was in charge.
The students were clearly the ones who were the most excited about what was scheduled as a 14-hour trip, clapping their hands in the dining room as news of the impending departure — two and a half hours late because of thick fog and bad weather — came over the loudspeakers.
The nonstudent passengers ate after the students, and Park and Hur noticed an unusual thing. Unlike a previous ferry voyage they had taken to Jeju, there was no safety instruction video showing passengers where to find the life jackets and how to put them on.
“I don’t know if it was just our room but they didn’t show it,” Hur said in the couple’s room in Mokpo Hankook Hospital in Mokpo, the nearest city to the wreckage, on Sunday.
Fireworks display
The students had a jubilant evening. Shortly after the ferry sailed from Incheon at about 9 p.m., they took turns dancing the limbo in the lobby on the ship’s third floor. At 10 p.m., all the passengers were invited to watch a fireworks display on the deck at the rear of the ship. It was foggy and windy, Hur recalled.
Entertainment indoors also included songs from two Filipino singers. Then the passengers bunked down in their cabins. Breakfast was at 8 o’clock the next morning, the students fed before the other passengers. Then they went to the game room or took photos with their phones on deck.
An Min-soo, another student on the trip, spoke to his mother by phone at about 8:15 a.m. All was fine. Fifteen minutes later, Park Ji-yoon’s grandmother called her to check on her. They were late, Ji-yoon said, though she didn’t know why.
Everything falling
At about that time, Choi Chan-yeol, the kitchen worker, was cleaning up in the dining hall after breakfast.
The jolt was massive, he said.
“Suddenly everything was falling — all the kitchenware, the chairs, the long microphone that belongs to the singers on board, everything,” he said at the Mokpo hospital on Friday. He spoke in between psychological counseling sessions, treatment for a knee contusion and police questioning.
He was among those confirming that twice, at about 8:30 a.m. and at 9 a.m., an announcement over the ship’s speakers told everyone to don life jackets and stay in their current locations. He ignored the instructions. The ship was listing severely — the floor was becoming the wall, the walls were becoming the ceiling and floor.
Pushing Through
“It was scary as the ferry was tilting and water was filling up,” he said. “I found a long microphone cord on the floor that was connected somewhere. I don’t know where, but when I pulled it, it was strong enough for me to hold onto and walk till I reached the door of the restaurant hall. My knees hurt now because there was so much stuff I had to push through.”
The outside world began to learn that something was wrong at 8:55 a.m., with a radio call to navigational-assistance agency Vessel Traffic Services Center in Jeju. It was from an unnamed officer on the Sewol. The audio was supplied by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.
“Please contact coast guard. Ship is in danger. It’s listing now,” the caller said.
“Where’s your ship?” the vessel services operator asked.
“Please take measures quickly, please quickly,” the Sewol responded. And later: “Ship has listed a lot. Can’t move. Please come quickly.”
The caller gave the location of the Sewol as next to Byeongpungdo island, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) from Jeju. The coast guard received the alert at 8:58 a.m., the security ministry said.
Emergency calls
The Sewol was then contacted by Vessel Traffic Services on Jindo, an island hugging South Korea’s southwestern coast. The passengers weren’t on lifeboats because of the boat’s angle in the water, the Sewol said in response to a question.
The VTS transcript shows that a ship named Doola Ace was 2.1 miles (3.4 kilometers) from the Sewol at 9:06 a.m. VTS asked the boat to move closer to the Sewol to aid the rescue. Twelve minutes later, the Doola Ace told VTS passengers were not evacuating.
“We cannot move alongside if people don’t evacuate,” the Doola Ace told VTS. At 9:23 a.m., the Doola Ace was “right in front” of the Sewol, waiting for people to evacuate.
“Even if it’s impossible to broadcast, please go out as much as you can and make the passengers wear life jackets and more clothes,” Jindo told the Sewol at 9:24 a.m. A minute later, the operator said: “We don’t know the situation there. The captain should make the final decision and decide quickly whether to evacuate passengers.”
‘So many passengers’
One minute later, the Sewol asked: “If they escape now, can you save them right away?” And then: “We have so many passengers, I don’t think a helicopter can save them all.”
Hur and Park were in their cabin when the jolt came. They had taken the ferry before and had felt the ship shake a great deal at this juncture of the journey. So it wasn’t until a water bottle suddenly rolled across the cabin floor that they realized something was wrong. Park was thrown to the other side of the cabin, hurting her ribs. Hur grabbed onto a pipe.
They both heard the announcement: “Stay where you are. It’s dangerous if you move.” They donned life jackets.
Yang In-seok, the cargo transporter, ignored the order. By 9 a.m., he said, the ship was listing at a 45-degree angle. He bolted up from the third floor of the stern, and even so, got to the deck just in time to see a helicopter hovering overhead. He spoke at an emergency center at a gymnasium in Jindo, one of the closest land points to the sunken ship, wearing a brace on his neck.
Scene of chaos
Steersman Oh Young-seok described a scene of chaos, with the ship’s angle putting the lifeboats out of reach for passengers and crew alike. He wasn’t on the bridge when the ship began to list, so had no explanation for what happened.
“We wanted to help. We know the rule,” he said as he dragged on a cigarette outside the Mokpo hospital during a break from police questioning, dressed in a white hospital gown with an IV drip attached to his arm. “The rule is to help the old and the weak, pregnant women, then passengers, and then we should leave when it appears all have left, and then the captain should abandon the ship last.
“But the vessel was tilting fast, we couldn’t reach any lifeboats. I believe they were all functional, but how can you reach them when you’re walking on the walls already? Tilted to 60 degrees! All 46 of them were functional, I remember getting them checked on Feb. 10.”
Away from bridge
As for Capt. Lee, he wasn’t on the bridge when the problems began, authorities said. The ship was being steered by the third navigation officer, identified only by her surname, Park. She was attempting to steer through a waterway known for rough currents called Maeng Gol Soo Ro for the first time, investigators said. Another helmsman, Cho, was also on the bridge.
The captain returned to the bridge and gave the order for passengers to stay put. Then, prosecutors say, he turned up on one of the first rescue boats to leave the ship. In televised remarks as he was taken into custody, Lee said he gave the order for the vessel to turn, then returned “briefly to the cabin to look after something.” The incident began while he was away from the bridge, he said.
Lee, who faces five charges including accidental homicide and negligence, was flanked by Park and Cho as he spoke. They face three charges, including accidental homicide and violation of maritime law, prosecutor Yang Joong-jin said in Mokpo. The three are being held in custody at the Mokpo coast guard station.
“The announcements to stay on the vessel were issued because rescue boats hadn’t yet arrived,” Lee said. “The currents were extremely fast. The water was cold.
‘Many complications’
“Even if life jackets were worn, if we abandon the ship without a clear judgment you can be dragged far away,” he said. “I judged that there would be many complications.”
The rescue effort included not just coast guard, navy and other official vessels but a plethora of fishing and other private boats.
Kim Hyun-ho, a 47-year-old fisherman, was at the scene by 10 a.m., 18 minutes after he heard an announcement from his community center speaker on nearby Daemado island saying boats needed to be mobilized.
“I didn’t know where to start,” he said by phone from his home on Daemado, where he fishes for anchovy and exports seaweed to Japan. “I saw people in life jackets on the ferry, which was about 90 degrees tilted and half in the water already, but there were people swimming in the water, too.”
He got about 25 people, mostly students, onto his boat, and transferred them to a larger vessel waiting nearby, he said. The Sewol was “sinking fast. I wanted to get more people out of the water, but my boat is a small one.”
‘Too frantic’
Another Daemado fisherman, Kim Young-min, 50, raced to the scene after receiving a text message from a neighbor.
“It was too frantic to count how many we pulled out of the water,” Kim said by phone. “All I remember was, everyone I pulled out was a kid.”
It was at about this time that Ji-yoon called her grandmother from the ship.
“Grandma, I think I’m going to die,” she said. “The ship is sinking and I’m holding onto the rail.”
Then the phone disconnected. Her grandmother reached the girl one more time, but Ji-yoon said she had to go. The last communication: a text at 10:09 a.m. with a single South Korean character, one that conveyed no meaning.
An Min-soo was luckier. He was on the deck playing with his friends when the ship began to list, his mother said by phone from her home in Ansan, asking that her name not be used.
In the water
He held onto the rail but, a nearby teacher told students to wear life jackets and jump into the sea, which An did, he told his mother. He was in the water for five minutes before a lifeboat rescued him, making him one of the first to be saved. His mother saw his name on the accounted-for list and got a text message from him after 10 a.m. to say that he was safe.
Park, Hur and the other passengers in their cabin barely made it out. After they donned life jackets, water began to flow into the room, eventually blocking the emergency door they could have used if they had been told to evacuate. The only way out was a sealed window, and they weren’t able to break it with a fire extinguisher.
“There was a wardrobe that had life jackets in front of our cabin,” Hur said, wearing a back brace and speaking rapidly. “I took the doors off and took all the life jackets out. We used the wardrobe as a ladder as the water started to rise in our cabin.”
Somehow, rescuers broke the window and told the occupants to jump into the water. Park was lift Hur was taken onto a coast guard ship.
Also rescued: Danwon Vice Principal Kang, the leader of the school trip, and student Ko Hyun-suk. Almost all of the 174 survivors were loaded onto boats that came from shore. Coast guard officials are still investigating how many of the 46 lifeboats supposed to be on the Sewol were deployed.
In Ansan, parents learned about the accident from a text sent by Danwon High School at 9:50 a.m., according to a timeline written on a noticeboard at the school. An Min-soo’s mother heard the news from other people because she was at work. Park Ji-yoon’s grandmother also heard it from others.
Danwon chartered more than 20 buses to take parents to the emergency center in Jindo. The parents of Ji-yoon were among the first to make six-hour trip, carrying dry clothes for their daughter.
Contradictory information
All the relatives encountered a contradictory, frustrating and ultimately devastating series of communications. Less than two hours after the Sewol began to sink, Danwon school officials said all of their students aboard the ship had been rescued, citing communications with the coast guard. That afternoon, the government more than halved the number of people it said had been rescued, from more than 360 to less than 170.
In Ansan, the school set up a center for relatives in a fourth-floor auditorium, with the Korean Red Cross and other groups serving noodles, rice, drinks and coffee. Televised news played on a large screen at one end of the room. Also displayed was a notice board with the names of students and teachers on the Sewol. As confirmation of their rescues came in, their names were highlighted with a purple or yellow marker. Most names — including Ji-yoon’s — weren’t highlighted.
During the evening, a frustrated parent tore part of it down.
‘Regret it’
“Two days before she was heading off on this trip, she told us that she didn’t want to go because she didn’t want to travel on a ferry,” said grandmother Kim, speaking at the center in a shaking voice, tears running down her face, her brown handbag lying on the ground where she dropped it. She had raised the girl because Ji-yoon’s parents worked. “We told her that she would regret it if she didn’t go. Now we regret it. We shouldn’t have made her go.”
Teachers at the Danwon center were crying as well as they tried to deal with angry parents. Outside the school, ambulances stood by in case parents needed medical attention.
In Jindo, a fishing and farming island of about 34,000, relatives divided their time between the center at the gymnasium, which also offered television news, refreshments and a place to lie down, and the port itself, 20 minutes’ drive away. There, they gazed into the fog that rendered the rescue operations impossible to see. They couldn’t know until they returned to watch the television news how divers were struggling with poor underwater visibility and strong currents.
Cold water
“What we wanted to know was what was happening, but no one was responsible enough to tell us,” family member Ma Dong-yoon said Friday, reading a statement prepared by relatives of the missing passengers. “Even at that moment, the kids were probably screaming for their lives in the cold water.”
The area leading to the dock was filled by tent after tent stretching for hundreds of meters providing food, raincoats and other necessities, leaving just enough space for vehicles to pass. Dozens of police officers were standing by.
“Divers, please hurry, hurry,” Park Young-woo, whose daughter, a Danwon student, had taken the trip, said as he stood on the dock, wearing a blue rain slicker. “Don’t rest. Don’t stop. Rotate if you’re tired. Please do your best. All our children would already be home by now if you had done your best.” His wife displayed a video on her phone of their daughter twirling a hula hoop and wearing a cow costume.
‘Terrible sin’
Sorrow and sadness were expressed everywhere. Kim Han-shik, the 72-year-old chief executive officer of the ship’s owner and operator Chonghaejin Marine, said in a televised Thursday press briefing that his company had committed a “terrible sin.” Kim Young-bung, another company executive, bowed and apologized on behalf of the company at a separate press conference.
Investigators raided the company’s offices on Thursday to inspect operational manuals and other documents, though no executive had been called for questioning as of Saturday, prosecutors said.
Park and Hur said they can’t stop thinking about the disaster. Their livelihood, in the form of their truck, their tools and the construction materials are gone, and their lives are changed.
“We can’t forget it and we will never be able to,” said Park. “My husband cries every time he talks about this. He can’t fall asleep at night.”
Sewol engine driver Jeon Young-joon, 61, said he feels guilty.
Level three
“I really should have searched for some kids. I knew it was an excursion boat, but I was in level three doing my logbook,” he said outside the hospital in Mokpo, smoking. “When I pushed the door open, which kept closing because it was tilted, there was no one in the corridor. I thought I would be one of the last.
“We’re old. These kids had no chance to try anything. I have had my days, at least. The captain really should have done more, much more. Yes, it was one of those moments where fear takes you over, but I’m sure he knew, leaving the ferry, that the kids he told to stay put were still there waiting for his instructions.”
Kang Min-kyu, the vice principal in charge of the group, knelt in front of the families at the gymnasium the night of Thursday with 10 other teachers, not all of whom had been on the ferry.
The next day, he was found hanged behind the gymnasium.
“It’s too much, being alive alone while more than 200 of my students are missing,” he wrote in a note found inside his wallet, police said. “Please place all the blame on me because I was in charge of the trip. Please cremate my body and scatter the ashes where the ship sank. Perhaps I should be a teacher for those missing children in the other world.”
Click to enlarge
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