The Ferry Sewol Part 1: Cowards in Command

This is Part 1 as this massive, infuriating story of such negligent injustice... just can't be summed up into any sort of "short form" video. ▶THE FERRY SEWOL PART 2 (The Conclusion): https://youtu.be/LMZIwHxVTtc The Sampoong Department Store Collapse: https://youtu.be/259gYwTWUyU Hotel New World Collapse - Singapore: https://youtu.be/45tvKCvP4zU Toss a coin to your Researcher? The Immortar Supporters really do help to make in-depth content like this possible: Patreon: www.patreon.com/BrickImmortar PayPal: www.paypal.com/paypalme/brickimmortar

Lying to parents in the aftermath of a disaster and making them believe their children survived is just so unbelievably vile.

“Most of the student passengers obeyed the announcements. Some passengers, who disobeyed the announcements, climbed to the top of the ship or jumped into the water and were rescued.” It pisses me off. The students trusted the adults because this is what you’re normally taught when confronted with a situation like this. “Don’t panic and listen to the authorities because you might make things worse.” They listened and they suffered for it.

There was another video I watched on this tragedy. A parent of a late student was interviewed and she said that before losing her child, she was on the phone with them. She told them "Stay there and listen to your superiors. Be good, and you'll be safe." I had never seen so much pain and regret on a woman's face.

I have often low key wondered why in almost every recent Korean disaster movies I have watched, the Korean government are almost always presented in a negative light as being unreliable and downright ineffective at responding to disastrous events. Real life events like these are the reason why.

For all the disasters and tragedies that have occurred in recent and older times throughout history that I watched documentaries or personal retellings with, the sinking of the Sewol was probably one of few that elicited a strong emotional response from me, one of anger, fury, and cynicism, due to how many young futures were lost in the disaster, and the fact the people whom they looked up to save them basically left them out for dead, saving their own skins, then lying about how they managed to save everyone.

The fishermen and civilian boaters did more for the passengers of that ferry than did the crew OR Coast Guard!

They had HOURS to rescue these kids as the ferry slowly sunk. HOURS! How damn hard could it have been to say, "get out of your rooms, get on the deck, hang on, and jump in the water if this damn boat sinks!!!" What an insane, insane tragedy. I feel so much anger and sadness for these poor children and poor parents. Imagine imagining your child's senseless death?! So many of these kids texted their parents in their last moments.

As a former ferry Captain with nearly 40 years experience navigating the Dire Straights in Northern Alaska, I know when the ferry line I formerly worked for put FOUR new decks on top of MY ferry I called them straight away and said, "I'm not driving that, it looks dangerous".

Out of respect for the children who died from multiple tiers of negligence and incompetence in this awful and mostly (if not nearly completely) avoidable tragedy, I have paused this video momentarily to look further into this and have now watched about an hour of content recovered from the student's phones (video and audio) as well as calls and messages that had been recorded by parents and siblings/friends who were not on the vessel. All subtitled as I do not speak Korean, so of course there may be translation issues here and there, but I cannot emphasise enough that these kids were put through absolute hell. They all, in every case that I have seen, even when the ship began to list severely and their rooms began to flood, stuck together with each other and did exactly as they were told out of a desire to help rescue efforts that they were made to believe were underway and to increase each other's chances of survival-- The last bit making this so much more horrific. These kids were well behaved, but the rules they were following were faulty and the instructions they got were incorrect at best and actively detrimental otherwise. In one video from a passenger's phone, a student (a boy) starts to put on a life vest, then calls into the hallway to ask a group of girls if they all have life vests. They say no, two of them out of a group of around five in total can't find any. The boy and his friend (who is filming) shuffle around a bit, and when the camera is picked up again, they are staggering their way into the hall to give their own life vests to the two girls who are clearly terrified. In another video, an alert comes over the PA system, which was not translated in the video I watched, but one boy proceeds to ask, "Doesn't it make more sense to leave? Won't we flood here?" In a follow up video from what appears to be the same group of students some time later, their rooms are indeed beginning to flood, and while they are handling it incredibly well, they are all absolutely terrified and joking nervously with each other... One student says, "I knew this would happen!" And it might be the same boy as the first video, although I'm not sure as the speaker is not on camera so I'm unable to confirm that. These children acted with more selflessness, sense, and bravery than any of the adults involved at any level. It is so heartbreaking that I can't advise anyone look up these videos, although they are available in compilations (some of which were made by their friends and families from what I can understand from translating the Korean text where it is present in some video descriptions), purely because the amount of compassion and pride for these kids who behaved incredibly well under horrifying circumstances is nearly overwhelmed by the rage of knowing that most of them went on to be killed by incompetence and negligence which was absolutely not their fault-- None of these children had to die. In fact, most of them had the right idea and wanted to take correct actions early on from what I have seen in most of their recordings, but they were actively discouraged by those in charge and told not to. It's breathtakingly infuriating and heart-wrenching, and I urge everyone to take care of yourselves and not watch these videos if you may be particularly prone to internalising these types of situations or content. Know your limits; It is absolutely okay if you don't think you can handle it, as nobody should have to handle it, because it shouldn't have happened in the first place. I grieve the loss of so many lives, especially young lives, at the hands of incompetence, corruption, and all around ineptitude by all those who were charged with their safety and wellbeing. I truly hope their friends and families are doing as well as possible, that the few survivors are doing as well as possible, and that this tragedy if nothing else may contribute to better maritime safety procedures not just in Korea, but in general. There is obviously no real positive outcome, aside from the hope that it may inspire better practices going forward in local and other maritime operations and services. If this tragedy encourages even one ship to run more safely, then it may be the case that this incident at the very least may help to prevent other similar tragedies from occurring in the future. That's the best I can offer at the moment, in regards to any kind of "good" result of any of this; I try to end on a positive note when dealing with serious cases and especially those involving children, but it is sometimes very difficult to do so, and this is one of those cases-- Primarily because unless the systemic problems are resolved which contributed to how terribly this incident was mishandled, it is hard to say if any changes or improvements in safety will ever effectively be made or implemented on a larger scale. Thank you very much for another excellent video; You have done an excellent job in bringing this tragedy to attention. I especially appreciate the respect with which you treat all of these cases, but especially such a heartbreaking one such as this, in such a well-researched and thorough manner.

from everything I read about this, if proper protocols were made, 99% of the passengers should have been saved, the ship took a full hour to list past a point where most passengers could easily be rescued, plenty of time to get almost all passengers off the ship.

I saw a separate documentary of this case, and how when the Korean gov stopped looking for people, actual divers from cities nearby took it upon themselves to rescue the bodies that were in there seabed. They were old, traumatized, and horrified. Very rarely did they pull a body to the surface, but when they did, they were always in shock.

As a former Sailor, I have no words to express my fury and contempt for a captain or crew so derelict in their duty that they abandoned their posts without doing everything in their power to see to the safety and survival of the passengers.

Yeah, the Sewol disaster was one of the most infuriating stories I ever have had the displeasure to read. All those kids were simply left to drown, even though they had HOURS of time to evacuate and rescue was literally a few miles away. Nearly 100% of the people on the ferry could have been saved, but everyone in authority from the President on down to the ship's captain were far more concerned with saving face - or their own skins - than saving lives. The scene on the ferry was so horrific one of the civilian divers tasked with evidence and body recovery killed himself afterward. Only good part to it AT ALL was that the President was impeached and summarily rode out of town on a rail, though it took a massive amount of activism and protest by the parents - and in South Korea that is NOT at all easy! - to finally turf her out. The wife of the diver who committed suicide was one of those that testified at the impeachment hearing and she had his video footage to back her testimony of what it looked like in there. This wasn't a tragedy, This was mass murder by malign neglect and depraved indifference. The President shouldn't have just been thrown from office. She should have been thrown in jail for life. And the same goes for the captain AND the ferry owners.

"All the survivors had been rescued". Yeah, all that were rescued survived. What a revelation

I was an English teacher at a Korean public school when this happened. I can't imagine what it was like for the staff and students at the school. I kept looking around my school, feeling spooked -- like an entire grade might just vanish. When the hallways were quiet I almost needed to be reassured that they were all there. There was this haunting thought, "Where are my students? Where are my students?" I'd want to cry for those left behind in the affected school. I knew at the time the Sewol sinking was a total clusterf***, but now I learn that it was an even worse cockup than I'd known.

I had a Korean roommate living in the US with me during the year of the accident who I'm still very close too. Normally whenever I'd return to my dorm after class, I'd normally find him doing pull-ups or some form of exercise in the living area but on this day, he wasn't there. I faintly heard Korean coming from his room so I knocked and entered to see what was up. He was sitting at his desk watching Korean news on his laptop, arms crossed, silent, and tears running down his face. That's when I saw the Sewol upside down for the first time. My roommate loved to talk but despite my best efforts to cheer him up, he didn't say a word for the rest of the day, let alone move.

There are an uncomfortably large number of "So-and-so did not follow this order" or "Refused to do so" in this disaster.

This was a hard watch. But thank-you for your attention to detail.

As an ex-fireman, this is so difficult to hear. Your job, your duty, your responsibility is to save lives. If it means you put your life at risk, or give it up to save another, even if it's just one person, you do it. Without hesitation. My wife, son, family and friends knew this was what I signed up for. While concerned every time that radio went off, they couldn't have been prouder. Where I lived were my people, friends and family, so why wouldn't I be willing to risk my life for theirs, and lay it down for them if necessary? I live in a tourist area of the Great Smoky Mountains, and many calls would involve people I didn't know. I would gladly do the same for them, just as I would do for these kids. I simply cannot understand this. What cowards! You search every inch of anything you are sent to search. These guys faced a leaning ship and maybe some water and darkness, depending on the deck. We use to search houses on fire, on our hands and knees crawling with one hand feeling and the other either holding the hose, or touching either the left or right wall for orientation, or holding the guy in fronts ankle if you were the second guy. That way two people could be feeling with their spare hand as you went along. You hands are in gloves so thick it's hard to move them, but you still have to be able to tell what your touching for sure. We did all this in darkness that can't be explained other than to say it's like being down in a cave and turning the lights off. Fires put off some much black smoke, you can't see your hand in front of your face even with your flashlight on and being right next to flames. All while feeling the heat from the flames through your turnout gear. That feels like wearing about 3 sets of coveralls at once. You have zero skin exposed to prevent burns as long as possible. And to top it off, you're trying to control your breathing to use as little air as possible off your tank (we routinely were testing to see how long we could make a 30 minute tank last, you had to make at least 2 hours to stay, the best I ever saw was 3.5 hours), your breathing through a full face mask that has positive pressure, so you have to push hard to exhale. Oh, you try to not crawl right into a fire or get cut off by one all at the same time, and you're constantly worried about collapse or a floor giving way, or the hot water heater blowing up or blasting through floors and roof and not being in it's way. Firemen/Firewomen do this willingly, and that's not counting what you see at car wrecks, drowning, or dealing with brush fires. Yet, these bastards wouldn't do anything more than they did?!? Death penalties should be imposed on all parties responsible and the ones that refused to do their damn jobs! You might think that's harsh, but they did it to those kids without the benefit of a trial. Honestly, they wouldn't have to do that to me, I couldn't live with myself if I did what these jokers did.