South Korean prosecutors yesterday said they had raided shipping safety watchdogs as part of expanded investigations following the sinking of a ferry last week in which more than 300 people were killed or missing presumed dead.
“The objective was to investigate malpractices and corruption in the entire shipping industry,” Song In-taek, head deputy chief prosecutor at Incheon District Prosecution Service, told reporters.
The Korea Register of Shipping, which is in charge of testing and certifying ships, and the Korea Shipping Association (KSA), which is responsible for routine shipment inspections, were not immediately available for comment.
Prosecutors raided the register’s headquarters in the southern port city of Busan yesterday. Yonhap news agency said investigations would look at the possibility of corruption in testing ships and whether bribes were paid.
The raid on the KSA took place on Wednesday when prosecutors also raided the home of Yoo Byung-un, the head of a family that owns the Chonghaejin Marine Co, the company that operated the ship.
“The company will fully cooperate with the investigation,” Kim Jae-beom, an official at Chonghaejin, said by telephone.
The finances of Chonghaejin and its complex share structure have come into the spotlight since the disaster. Yoo was jailed for fraud for four years in the early 1990s.
Asked if Yoo had gone overseas, prosecutors said he was still in South Korea, but they had yet to contact him.
The financial watchdog and prosecutors are looking into the assets of Yoo’s family for any possible embezzlement, prosecutors added.
Meanwhile, furious relatives of missing victims from the ferry disaster yesterday attacked a top coast guard official, accusing him of lying about efforts to retrieve bodies still trapped in the submerged vessel.
About 20 relatives forced their way into the office of South Korean Coast Guard Deputy Director Choi Sang-hwan and pulled him outside, ripping his shirt and punching and slapping him around the face and neck.
The relatives accused Choi of exaggerating the scale of the recovery effort, saying the scene they witnessed during a boat trip to the disaster site earlier in the day did not match with his briefings.
The bereaved families have continually criticized what they see as delays in the rescue and recovery operation and a lack of committed resources.
The crowd held Choi until other officials arrived and then subjected them to a lengthy grilling on the recovery operation.
The confirmed death toll stood at 171 yesterday, but 131 were still missing as dive teams searched in near pitch-black conditions for bodies trapped in the ferry’s interior.
Many relatives believe some of the victims may have survived for several days in trapped air pockets, but perished in the cold water after no rescue came.
As a result some have asked for autopsies to be performed, to see if it would be possible to determine the precise cause and time of death.
“We have received a number of enquiries about autopsies,” said a member of the forensic team on Jindo Island working on identifying the bodies recovered from the disaster site.
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