On the afternoon of April 15, 2014, 311 students from South Korea's Tanwon High School boarded a cruise ship docked at Incheon Port. They will travel to Jeju Island, a famous attraction in South Korea, for their graduation trip.
On the eve of the students' boarding
The Sewol was originally scheduled to depart at 6:30 p.m., but the fog that night caused visibility of the sea to be less than 1 kilometer, so the Incheon Air Traffic Control Center issued a low visibility alert, and all the ships in the harbor suspended flights, and at 8:30 p.m., the Air Traffic Control Center retracted the warning.
The port that night
Later, the Sewol applied to leave the port, and the Sewol was the only ship to leave port that night.
Sailing in this weather is a certain danger, but the Sewol is not only a passenger ship, this voyage is not only for these high school students, it is also a cargo ship, carrying a large number of goods, cars, large containers, etc., so the suspension of flights, for the shipping company will be a loss, which is why the Sewol insists on leaving the port.
The Sewol, which is full of containers
Shortly after the departure, the students of Tanyuan High School, led by their teachers, gathered in the hall on the third floor of the cruise ship, taking turns playing games, singing happily, and watching the fireworks show on the deck, which was a pleasant and romantic trip for the students who had been studying intensely for several years.
The Sewol at night
Everything was normal on this night's voyage, and no one could have imagined what would happen next.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="85" > the next day</h1>
The next morning, most of the students just got up, and at 7:30 a.m., the cruise ship entered the Mengku Waterway, one of the most intense waterways along the Korean route.
Meng bone waterway
Because this waterway is between two high ground on the submarine continental shelf, the flow of seawater will bring about a "bottleneck effect", so that passing ships feel the sudden acceleration of the current, prone to accidents.
Where the boat is travelling
But the experienced crew, who could allow the ship to take advantage of the current here and speed up the ship's voyage, chose to do so for the Sewol, who was already two hours late.
At this time, it was not the captain, nor the first and second mates, but a female third mate named Park Hanjie, who did not have much sailing experience.
Park Han-jae
As the Sewol passed through the Culminin waterway, Park first switched the vessel from autonomous driving to manual driving, then had the crew adjust the course from 135 degrees to 140 degrees, and then quickly ordered an adjustment to 145 degrees to cope with the rapid turbulence.
However, just as the ship was turning left under her command, the entire cruise ship suddenly tilted sharply to the left, and the crew of the engine room also said through the intercom, "The rudder wheel cannot move", and then the power of the whole ship began to disappear, and the cruise ship stopped on the surface of the sea in an oblique posture.
Through the descriptions of later survivors, they heard a loud noise at 8:50 a.m., and then the cruise ship suddenly tilted to the left, everything in the cabin flew up, and many of the students who were eating in the cafeteria were thrown into corners, the students were hit, injured and bleeding, and almost all of them were injured and began to cry and scream.
The boat tilts instantaneously
Due to the sudden tilt of the ship, as well as the drop of the container on board, the Sewol lost the resilience of the center of gravity, that is, it could not return to the correction after the tilt, and the ship began to sink slowly, and the captain at the time was named Lee Joon-seok, who was sleeping in the room at the time of the accident, and then hurried to the wheelhouse.
After the accident, the captain began to try to save the ship
He began to try to return to the ship by releasing the ballast water on the left side, only to find that it did not work, and the Sewol began to float on the surface of the sea in an increasingly larger, oblique position, and at this time the ship was in the rapids of the MonKu Sea Road, and the Sewol began to drift north at a speed of 1.7 knots, and the situation became more and more urgent.
The Sewol after the accident
The captain made a surprising decision after sending a distress signal to the nearby air traffic control center, instead of first placating the students and providing the necessary rescue, he told the crew to abandon the ship immediately, and had the crew issue a broadcast that read:
Broadcast content
Because of this broadcast, many students either stayed in the dining room or stayed in the room with the cabin door closed, and many students did not realize the seriousness of the matter, and they also posted the video taken in the cabin to the Internet, thinking that someone would soon come to rescue them, completely unaware that death had slowly approached.
Screenshots of in-cabin videos posted by students
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="862" > rescue</h1>
At 9:30 a.m., after receiving the rescue signal, the air traffic control center notified the nearby coast guard, and the coast guard sent ships to the vicinity of the Sewol and released the lifeboat, at this time the sea had flooded the second deck, and the coast guard rescued the people waiting on the deck, and the first people rescued were the crew of the Sewol.
Among them was the captain Lee Joon-seok, and at that time, Lee Joon-seok did not identify himself or say the specific circumstances of the ship.
The first rescuers included the captain
After a while, the sea began to pour back, the hull tilted to 60 degrees, and many teachers began to rescue the students, but most of the students closed the hatches because the room was still rolling with the broadcast, "Please stay where you are, don't come out" broadcast.
Most of the students remain in the cabin
Moreover, the site of the Sewol accident was not on the high seas, but near the coastline of South Korea, only a few hundred meters from the nearest island, and it is reasonable to say that the rescue ships will be able to reach it quickly.
After the captain was rescued ashore, he explained the situation to the Coast Guard personnel, and the Coast Guard began to organize rescue for the passengers on board, and at the same time asked for help from the Rokkawi Navy's Third Fleet.
Captain of the Sewol
At this time, it would be naïve for the students to expect the Coast Guard to rescue them, because the Coast Guard was nearby, and for a long time, except for the rescue of the captain and a few crew members, they did not see any rescue of the students inside the ship. The Coast Guard did not carry out further rescues because they had not received specific orders, and rescues have been chaotic. Moreover, civilian divers were once forbidden to approach the Sewol.
Coast Guard
A female crew member named Park Ji-young (22 years old) who remained on the ship, through the radio, let the students all put on life jackets, when several students asked her why she did not get off the ship, she said that the crew wanted to be the last to get off the ship, and Park Ji-young did not survive because she saved the students.
Brave and beautiful crew member Park Ji-young
At 10:01, the hull tilted to 70 degrees, the sea water backfilled more and more seriously, several passengers on the deck, realizing that waiting for rescue was impossible, began to pull the fire hose open, the students trapped below, one by one, pulled to the deck, about 40 students were pulled to the corridor of the fourth deck.
The helicopter only rescued a few people on deck
At 10:15, the hull tilted more than 90 degrees, and many passengers began to flee, but many students in the cabin still did not come out, only a small number of students opened the hatch and bravely climbed to the sloped deck, these students were a small number, rescued personnel, and rescued, not the South Korean Coast Guard, but the fishing boats that came nearby.
Fishing boats began to rescue people
At 10:17, the hull tilted more than 100 degrees, the sea did not pass most of the cabin, at this time, the students found that even if they wanted to come out, it was impossible, the porthole had appeared on the sea, even if they wanted to open the hatch, the pressure of the sea did not allow them to open, the room began to cry.
The hull tilt is very severe
Parents on the shore are anxious, on the one hand, they do not know the rescue situation, on the other hand, they receive text messages (suicide notes) from their children.
Parents on shore
At 10:21 a.m., less than two hours after the accident, the Sewol was completely turned upside down, with the entire bottom facing upwards, and it was difficult for any passengers to escape on their own.
The hull is completely inverted upside down on the surface of the sea
The South Korean Navy also learned of the accident and sent what it called South Korea's most professional, shipwreck rescue team to the scene, but they did not carry diving equipment, not even scubas, because they did not know that the ship had capsized like this, until 2:40 p.m., the navy sent another 40 divers.
Diver of the South Korean Navy
However, it didn't take long for the divers to work underwater that the water was too turbulent and stopped the rescue.
At the same time, there were as many as a dozen departments in South Korea that responded to the accident, but none of them had leadership ability, nor did they have the top commander of the accident, and all the departments did not have the correct information on the scene, so the rescue was chaotic at the beginning.
Officials began to apologize
The slowness of the rescue operation had a lot to do with one person, that is, the then President of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, who learned of the Sewol accident at 10 a.m., and by this time the accident had already occurred for more than an hour, because Park Geun-hye had asked all reports to her, not to use telephone and verbal advice, all in written form by fax.
Park
In this way, the document arrived in her hand, it was already 10 o'clock, and what is more exaggerated is that Park Geun-hye did not immediately arrange rescue after receiving the document, nor did she designate the person in charge of the rescue, but disappeared for 7 hours (later confirmed to discuss the political crisis that the accident may cause).
A large number of ships surrounded the Sewol
At 11:00 a.m., after the ship had completely capsized, the Ministry of Defense suddenly reported to the South Korean presidential office that "all the people were rescued, there were no casualties", at which time the media that had been waiting for the media began to announce that the students on the Sewol had been rescued, but the parents were angry because they knew that their children had not been rescued at all.
This erroneous consultation, which was broadcast for 50 minutes, was a serious misreporting incident, which once made the people lightly judge the seriousness of the accident, and many civilian boats began to evacuate the scene.
At 5:15 p.m., President Park Geun-hye made his first appearance after disappearing for seven hours, and his first words after arriving at the Seoul Security Building were, "I heard that students are wearing life jackets, is it so difficult to save?" ”
Park Geun-hye's behavior after the incident was considered by parents to be extremely cold-blooded, and her approval rating also plummeted.
By the third day, when more than 300 passengers on board had no hope of surviving, civilian divers were allowed to come to the Sewol at this time, and through the portholes they saw corpses floating everywhere in the ship, and the parents learned that the government had done nothing in the three days after the accident, and they were furious.
Folk divers
Finally, South Korean officials stopped the rescue and announced the results of the accident, killing 304 people, including 250 students, with a death rate of 63.8%.
On the third day the bow was fully cocked
Of the 172 people who were rescued, one was the vice principal of Tanyuan High School, and 3 days later, someone found him hanging himself on the hillside near the school, and the police found a suicide note in his wallet, which read: "More than two hundred people are unknown, I have no confidence to live alone, all the responsibility lies with me, I planned this graduation trip, please scatter my ashes in the sea of the incident, let me stay with those students who have no bones, and continue to be their teacher in the underworld." ”
vice-principal
After the accident, South Korean prosecutors began to pursue responsibility, listing 399 people, including the captain's crew shipping company and the shipping agency, and eventually convicted 53 people.
Among them, the biggest response was the captain Li Junxi, who abandoned the ship at the first time and fled, after investigation, Li Junxi was temporarily transferred to the Sewol, and the original captain of the Sewol was a first-class navigator Shen Shangqiu, but he and the shipping company had a conflict and were removed.
The captain of the detained ship, Lee Joon-seok
At the time of the accident, captain Lee Joon-seok violated an unwritten rule of sea navigation for hundreds of years, and in the event of a shipwreck, the captain must be the last person to leave the ship, which is also based on a professional ethical consensus that the captain, as a person with specific responsibilities, is necessary to do his best to ensure the safety of passengers in the event of a shipwreck.
In the end, South Korean prosecutors accused captain Lee Joon-seok of violating the Shipwreck Rescue Act, dereliction of duty, failure to report it, abandonment and death, and finally sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The rest of the crew were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 1 to 12 years.
Park Han-jeeh, who drove the boat, was sentenced to seven years in prison
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="892" > cargo ship owner</h1>
Not only that, but there are also serious problems with the ship Sewol, which belongs to south Korea's Cheonghae Town Shipping Company, and the president is Yu Bingyan, who is very responsible for the accident. In 2012, he bought a Japanese cargo ship built in 1994 and then modified it for four months.
As can be seen from the figure, the left is the original appearance of the Japanese freighter, the right is the modified Sewol, it can be found that the rear of the hull is much higher than the original, this is because the shipping company boss Yu Bingyan in order to be able to load the cargo, the original bottom cabin, into a cargo hold, and then in the upper part of the cargo hold, and added four layers of cabin, and the modified cargo compartment, according to the regulations, is to do bulkhead strengthening, but he did not do it in order to save money.
contrast
Such a large-scale transformation also requires the acceptance of relevant institutions to pass, and the Korean Classification Society has carried out two acceptances of the Sewol, both of which have passed smoothly, and follow-up professionals pointed out that such a transformation is impossible to pass, which shows that shipping companies and related agencies have a lot of collusion of interests.
Sewol according to the tonnage can only carry up to 987 tons of cargo, and on the day of the incident, but loaded 2142 tons of cargo, crazy overloaded with 1155 tons of cargo, and in order to be able to load so many goods, the Sewol will be more than 1000 tons of ballast water on the ship, you know, ballast water is to maintain the balance of the ship, and specially injected water, and the ballast water is replaced by cargo, the cargo can not be like ballast water, evenly distributed to the entire hull, which leads to the hull in the process of driving, prone to accidents.
Blue is ballast water
And such behavior is the shipping company's quick success, the pursuit of short-term benefits caused, it is because of this operation, from the beginning is a serious violation, so before the ship's captain Shen Shangqiu, many times reported the poor stability of the hull, and complained to the company about the excessive transformation of the hull, but many times reported to the useless, and finally he reported to the newspaper, the company knew about it and suspended it, which led to Li Junxi's temporary appointment.
The crew of the Sewol who pronounced the verdict
What is even more exaggerated is that president Yu Bingyan's personal hobby is photography, but it is the level of ordinary people, and in order to self-appreciate, he built a private gallery at the end of the Sewol to display his photographic works.
The gallery uses 37 tons of marble to create his ornate style, and the sudden increase in weight at the stern makes the cruise ship extremely dangerous during the ride.
Stern Gallery
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="903" > survey</h1>
South Korean officials gave an explanation for the accident, the Sewol was due to the steering error and the reduction in resilience caused by the modification of the hull, so the captain and crew were arrested, and the modification of the hull pointed to the shipping company owner Yu Bingyan, the South Korean prosecutor issued an arrest notice for it, and Yu Bingyan, who knew that it was difficult to escape, began to flee early, and the South Korean police initially set the reward amount at 50 million won (270,000 yuan).
Yu Bingyan, the boss of the shipping company
Finally received a report, someone found a corrupt body in the wilderness of South Jeolla Province, and finally identified as Yoo Byung-yan, but soon someone questioned that in 2 months, the body could not have decayed so quickly, suspecting that the South Korean authorities, in the shielding of Yoo Byung-yan, Yoo Byung-yan may still be alive.
Suspects are found
For the cause of the accident given by the South Korean official, the parents can not let go, they spontaneously organized a commission of investigation, the committee after 2 years of evidence collection, finally roughly figured out the truth of the Sewol accident, it turned out that on the Sewol, not all crew members, know that the ship is overloaded, because of this serious violation of the matter, the fewer people know the better, so the overload thing, except for the captain Lee Joon-seok and the first mate no one knows.
Since the Sewol was two hours later than the scheduled departure time, captain Lee Joon-seok and the first mate had discussed whether to speed up the road at night, but considering that the fog on the sea surface had not completely dissipated at night, they abandoned the plan to rush at night, and by the next morning it was three ndy-ess Park Han-jae, the helmsman and the chief engineer were controlling the ship, and the three of them did not know the overloading, and the three-mate Park Han-jae's navigation experience was seriously insufficient.
At that time, the weather conditions on the sea were good, so the three pairs of Park Hanjie had been using automatic driving, but when it came to the Culmine waterway, the water flow increased, and she switched to manual driving, because she had been "taught" by the captain and the first mate before, the Culmination Waterway was turbulent, and it was necessary to use manual driving here, and it was safe to adjust the navigation.
However, this is the first time in two years that Park Hanjie has driven a ship independently, and at least the captain or first mate has been in command, and at this time, she is completely blindly operating, causing the ship to lose control.
The place of the crash
Through the later track playback of the AIS system, it will be found that Park Han made several large turns in order to fight against the ocean current, and she did not know that the overloaded ship, making such a big turn is easy to overturn, and sure enough, at a left turn at 8:55, the container that was not fixed in the upper part of the ship fell into the sea under the action of inertia, which is why the survivors, later said to have heard a loud noise, which is dozens of containers, The sound of being slammed to the left and hitting the ship's starboard side and subsequent salvage also confirmed that the Sewol did not hit a reef or an underwater object.
The Sewol after being salvaged as a whole
From the surveillance video inside the ship that was later exposed, it can be seen that when the ship made the last turn, the car loaded inside was violently thrown aside, and the cargo compartment that had not been strengthened by the bulkhead was quickly broken after the impact of these cars, and it can be seen that the speed of water inlet is very fast, which is why the Sewol sank particularly fast after capsizing.
Inside the vessel monitoring (black box) shows that the water is entering rapidly after the impact
It can be said that this accident will happen sooner or later, the previous captain saw such a potential risk, and repeated complaints, and the shipping company ignored it, because the interests are above all else, this time the captain of the Sewol dereliction of duty, the wrong operation of the three pairs, coupled with the illegal transformation of the hull, serious overloading and inaction of the regulatory authorities, resulting in the tragedy of the Sewol.
The previous "blood sacrifice" and "impact submarine" on the Internet are not reliable, and the real cause of the accident is already very clear, and it does not need the so-called conspiracy theory to explain.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" Data-track="916" > why didn't students run away? </h1>
However, with the capsizing of the Sewol, most of the students remained in the room according to the instructions of the ship's broadcast, most of them did not open the hatch, and only a small number of students who climbed to the top of the ship or jumped into the water were rescued even though the sea had already poured into the cabin.
Why do these students know the danger or not escape? This is the Sewol incident, an important reminder to us, the herd mentality.
Herd mentality says that an individual's behavior will be influenced or pressured by most people to abandon their own views, or go against their own hearts in order to align themselves with the whole.
There is also the authority effect, students are inexperienced in society, and when they encounter problems, they tend to listen to the instructions of school teachers or authoritative people, such as broadcasting is an "authority effect" for them. Therefore, in the sewol incident, why those students did not escape in the face of danger and insisted on staying in the room was precisely to obey these psychology.
Therefore, while understanding these accidents, we must also understand that if we face danger, what should we do, the herd mentality is not to make us maverick, to be different for different purposes, but to have our own thinking and judgment on some issues, people's cognition is constantly improving in thinking again and again, and we can see that even if people are facing the crisis, they are thinking about self-preservation, but there are still brave people who will stand up, such as the female crew member named Park Ji-young, if there can be more such people. The sewol's ending may have been very different.
Finally, when we face nature, we must have a sense of awe, nature is beautiful, but also ruthless, may such a tragedy not happen again.