The vice principal of a South Korean high school who accompanied hundreds of his pupils on what turned out to be a disastrous ferry trip has committed suicide, police said yesterday, as hopes faded of finding any of the 268 missing passengers alive.
Kang Min-gyu, 52, had been missing since Thursday. He appeared to have hanged himself with his belt from a tree outside a gym in the port city of Jindo where relatives of the people missing on the ship, mostly children from the school, were gathered.
Police said Kang did not leave a suicide note and that they started looking for him after he was reported missing by a fellow teacher. He was rescued from the ferry after it capsized on Wednesday
Photo: Reuters
Of the 475 passengers and crew on the ferry, 28 people had officially been declared dead before Kang’s suicide and 179 were rescued. The overwhelming majority of the missing are students from the Danwon High School on the outskirts of Seoul, who were on a holiday trip.
Divers are fighting strong tides and murky waters to get to the sunken ship, but the likelihood of finding any of the missing alive is slim.
At the high school in Ansan, an industrial town near Seoul, many friends and family of the missing gathered in somber silence, with occasional sounds of sobbing breaking the quiet.
“When I first received the call telling me the news, at that time I still had hope,” said Cho Kyung-mi, who was waiting for news of her missing 16 year-old nephew at the school.
“And now it’s all gone,” Cho said.
In the classrooms of the missing, fellow students have left messages on desks, blackboards and windows, asking for the safe return of their missing friends.
“If I see you again, I’ll tell you I love you, because I haven’t said it to you enough,” one message read.
Investigations into the sinking, South Korea’s worst maritime accident in 21 years based on possible casualties, have centered on possible crew negligence, problems with cargo stowage and structural defects of the vessel, although the ship appears to have passed all of its safety and insurance checks.
The 69-year old ship captain has also come under scrutiny after witnesses said he was among the first to escape the sinking vessel that was on a 400km voyage from the port city of Incheon to the South Korean holiday island of Jeju.
According to investigators, Captain Lee Joon-seok was not on the bridge at the time the Sewol ferry started to list sharply, with a junior officer at the wheel.
“I’m not sure where the captain was before the accident. However right after the accident, I saw him rushing back into the steering house ahead of me,” said Oh Young-seok, one of the helmsmen on the ship who was off duty and resting at the time.
“He calmly asked by how much the ship was tilted, and tried to rebalance the ship,” said Oh, who was speaking from a hospital bed in the city of Mokpo yesterday, where those injured in the incident have been taken.
Handing over the helm is normal practice on the voyage from Incheon to Jeju that usually takes 13.5 hours, according to local shipping crew.
Divers gained access to the cargo deck of the ferry yesterday, although that was not close to the passenger quarters, according to a coastguard official.
Other coastguard officials said that divers made several attempts to make it to the passenger areas but failed.
“We cannot even see the ship’s white color. Our people are just touching the hull with their hands,” Kim Chun-il, a diver from Undine Marine Industries, told relatives of the missing.
The ferry went down in calm conditions and was following a frequently traveled route in familiar waters. Although relatively close to shore, the area was free of rocks and reefs.
Lee has not commented on when he left the ship, although he has apologized for the loss of life.
The ship captain was described as an industry “veteran” by the officials from Chonghaejin Marine Co Ltd, the ship owner, and others who had met him described him as an “expert” who knew the waters he sailed well.
“I don’t know why he abandoned the ship like that,” said Ju Hi-chun, a maritime author who interviewed the captain in 2006 as one of the experts on the sailing route to Jeju island.
However, he added: “Koreans don’t have the view that they have to stay with their ship until the end. It is a different culture from the West.”
Some media reports have said the vessel turned sharply, causing cargo to shift and the ship to list before capsizing.
Marine investigators and the coastguard have said it was too early to pinpoint a cause for the accident and declined to comment on the possibility of the cargo shifting.
The record of the ferry owner was also under investigation and documents were removed from its headquarters in Incheon.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of