No Closure for Relatives, Survivors of Sewol Ferry Disaster.

This Thursday will mark the first anniversary of the Sewol disaster, a commercial maritime accident involving the capsizing of a ferry carrying mostly high school children, which resulted in the loss of about 300 lives out of 476 on deck. In the year since the disaster, little has been done to give the victim's families a sense of closure, nor to safeguard against further incidents like this one.

The disaster occurred off the southern coast, as the ferry took a hard turn in bad weather on its route to Jeju Island. The ship was overloaded with passengers and cargo, causing it to list heavily to one side and then gradually capsize and sink to the ocean floor. The disaster was exacerbated by the poor way in which it was managed, both by those crew on deck, who were the first to abandon ship and told passengers to wait on board for a precious hour in which they could have escaped, and by the Korea Coast Guard and Navy, which arrived on scene hours after a distress signal was sent. The crew have since been tried in court and jailed for dereliction of duty, but not enough has been done to prevent another Sewol from happening. While cargo manifest regulation is being taken more seriously in South Korea, a majority of ferry operators and crew remain on temporary contracts and are miserably ill-versed in proper safety procedures. In addition, Chonghaejin Marine, the LLC which owned Sewol and is broadly responsible for her crew's incompetence, retains a near monopoly on ferry services to Jeju Island. It is also yet until the cause of the disaster is certainly identified, as the Sewol remains on the ocean floor. Because of the low manageability, high vulnerability, and high risk that remain in the South Korean ferry industry, and the lack of an effective response, the sinking of the Sewol constitutes an ongoing disaster. One can only hope that this issue is resolved before another great human tragedy occurs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/world/asia/legacy-of-south-korea-sewol-ferry-sinking.html?_r=0
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/sewol-ferry-disaster-a/1780438.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-news-bc-skorea-ferry09-20150409-story.html#page=1