November 12, 2015•Update: November 12, 2015
By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
The captain in charge of a South Korean ferry during a disaster last year in which 304 people were killed lost his appeal against a life sentence Thursday.
The Supreme Court agreed with a previous ruling that 70-year-old Lee Jun-seok murdered his passengers -- most of whom were students from Gyeonggi Province’s Danwon High School -- by willful negligence when disaster struck the Sewol on April 16, 2014.
Lee’s escape from the sinking vessel -- after he had delayed the evacuation of others -- was likened to murder by President Park Geun-hye even before his case went to trial.
“While he could have easily informed the passengers of the urgent situation and reduced the number of casualties, Lee fled the ferry without doing so,” Chief Justice Yang Seung-tae was quoted as saying by local news agency Yonhap.
"Even after Lee escaped, he did not provide information on the situation onboard to the Coast Guard, being totally indifferent to the passengers' safety.”
Family members of the victims reportedly wept as the verdict was delivered on what was an emotionally-charged day -- dozens of Sewol survivors sat the nationwide college entrance exam in a reminder of what might have been for those who lost their lives.
In honor of the dead, a memorial event was held in central Seoul at 4.16 p.m. (0916 GMT).
The yellow ribbon used to symbolize the tragedy remains a ubiquitous symbol of the bereaved relatives’ quest for justice, amid claims that the government has not done enough to investigate the full scale of culpability for the Sewol’s sinking.
