Sampoong at sea

• Published Apr 23, 2014 4:59 PM KST
• Updated Apr 23, 2014 4:59 PM KST

By John Burton

As I read accounts of the capsizing of the ferry Sewol, it brings to mind disturbing parallels with Korea’s biggest peacetime disaster: the collapse of the Sampoong Department Store in southern Seoul in 1995, which killed 502 people.

One of the distinguishing features of both disasters was the dereliction of duty by those at the top.

Lee Jun-seok, the Sewol captain, has been arrested for being one of the first to flee the vessel instead of organizing evacuation procedures that could have saved most or all of the nearly 450 passengers onboard during the two and a half hours before the ferry sunk.

The abandonment of the Sewol has shocked not only Korea, but the world, since it violates one of the basic tenets of seamanship that the captain’s first duty is to ensure the safety of his passengers.

In the case of the Sampoong Department Store, on the morning of June 29, 1995, cracks began to appear on the top floor of the store. But instead of closing the building and issuing orders for customers to leave the store, the management kept quiet and fled the premises.

The executives did not want to order an evacuation of the store because it would have led to a loss of sales when the number of customers was unusually high that day. Several hours later, the store pancaked into rubble, trapping more than 1,500 people.

Another feature that Sewol and Sampoong may share in common is the issue of structural faults resulting from an effort to cut corners and boost profits.

Investigators are now looking into allegations that Cheonghaejin Marine, the owners of the Sewol, added more cabin rooms to squeeze in additional paying passengers after it bought the 18-year-old ferry from Japan in 2012. Piling on more cabin rooms on the upper deck could have made the vessel top-heavy, increasing the risk of it capsizing if sudden turns caused the ferry to lose its balance.

The case of Sampoong Department Store was a disaster waiting to happen. It was built on a landfill and the design of the building was changed from an apartment block to a more lucrative department store after construction already began, which resulted in the removal of some support columns to accommodate the installation of escalators.

A substandard concrete mix of cement and seawater was used in the construction of the ceilings and walls. Support columns were narrower than they should have been. The number of steel reinforcing bars embedded into the concrete was only half of what was needed to provide the required strength.

The integrity of the structure was further compromised when a fifth floor was later added to include restaurants, while an air conditioning unit was installed on the roof, which added an extra large load on the top of the building.

It was later discovered that city officials in charge of overseeing the building’s construction were bribed to overlook the illegal changes and poor construction.

It is likely to be the case that a similar catalogue of mismanagement lies behind the Sewol disaster.

One should be careful to draw broader cultural lessons from the Sewol tragedy. Similar incidents happen elsewhere. It was only two years that the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship immediately abandoned the vessel after it ran aground off the Italian coast and capsized, leaving his 447 passengers stranded, of whom more than 30 died.

But I must confess that I was not completely surprised when I heard that Captain Lee was among the first to leave the Sewol. As in the case of the Sampoong Department Store, there have been too many cases in Korea of those at the top looking out for their interests first to the detriment of the public.

These irresponsible actions reflect Korea’s neo-Confucian values, which have instilled a sense of entitlement to those in power and promote egotism that is in direct contradiction to the original writings of Confucius, who emphasized the reciprocal nature of responsibilities between ruler and ruled.

We have also seen in the past week the public eruption of ``han,’’ the unrequited resentments that have helped form the Korean character in response to a history of injustice dealt to the powerless. A similar psychological outpouring of anger followed the Sampoong disaster.

There has also been the ritual promise to punish the guilty, with President Park Geun-hye promising to hold every person who violated the law or regulations legally responsible. Similar statements were made at the time of the Sampoong disaster, but the jail sentences meted out to the owners and executives of the department store amounted to only a few years.

Although the Sewol disaster, like that of Sampoong, has contributed to a long-standing distrust of authority in Korean society, it is unlikely that things will change. Those in authority will reassert their power and those below will meekly accept their lot until the next big disaster strikes.

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent journalist and media consultant. He can be reached at john.burton@insightcomms.com.