SEOUL
A little over four months after South Korea’s Sewol ferry disaster – which left 300 dead or unaccounted for – the country’s main political parties struck a deal to fully investigate the tragedy, according to a media briefing held by the two sides Tuesday.
The calls for a breakthrough have been led in recent weeks by families of the victims, most of whom were teenagers on a school trip.
Tuesday’s agreement meant a bill was set to be passed in Seoul’s National Assembly, allowing a special counsel to be formed to uncover a suspected catalogue of errors contributing to the scale of the disaster on April 16 - when the Sewol ran into trouble off the country’s southwestern coast.
A murder trial’s already underway as the captain of the vessel and three senior crew members are accused of abandoning ship without making sufficient efforts to evacuate – 11 others from the Sewol’s staff are facing negligence charges and a separate legal process is ongoing concerning allegations that the ferry’s operator failed to meet safety guidelines.
The summer has already seen twists in the post-Sewol fallout, including a tearful apology from President Park Geun-hye and the discovery of the decayed body of the vessel’s de facto owner, Yoo Byung-eun, in a plum orchard in the country’s south on June 12.
Key officers from the police and prosecution have lost their jobs over a bungled investigation that allowed Yoo to initially evade the authorities for weeks.
Over the last month, protests held by grieving family members and opposition lawmakers intensified as one father of a 16-year-old victim has now been on hunger strike for more than 30 days – having also been joined by other grieving relatives and public figures.
With the full scale of culpability yet to be determined, the floor leaders of the main rival parties explained the make-up of the forthcoming special counsel during Tuesday’s briefing.
The opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy’s (NPAD) Park Young-sun insisted that while the ruling Saenuri Party will be able to appoint two of the counsel’s seven members, it would have to seek approval from both the NPAD and families of the victims.
However, the bill still has to be rubber-stamped by the National Assembly, raising concerns about a further breakdown between the parties after the cooling of a preliminary agreement already reached earlier this month.
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