Innocence of students seen in video clips

By Jun Ji-hye

Video clips retrieved from the mobile phones of teenagers missing after the Seowol ferry disaster, show them making jokes and laughing as the vessel was sinking off the southwest coast of Jindo on April 16.

“Mom and daddy! I love you. I’m saying this; I might die,” one student says during a 14-minute video clip released by a committee representing relatives of the dead and missing.

Members of other families also provided several clips filmed by their children to cable news channels, saying they hope the footage will help establish the full truth behind the maritime disaster.

In the clips broadcast on cable network channels, students of Danwon High School show no sense of danger while on the sinking vessel, apparently because crewmembers told them to stay put.

One video shot by 17-year-old Park Ye-seul in a cabin shows scenes at around 9:40 a.m. around 50 minutes after the ferry carrying 476 passengers first sent a distress call to the vessel traffic service (VTS) center on Jeju Island.

Park’s father found the clip while checking through some of his daughter’s belongings that had been returned to him.

As the vessel listed by about 90 degrees, a number of teenage girls lay on the horizontal walls, managing to make light of the situation by asking her friends: “Does anybody know how to measure the slope of this tilting ship (mathematically)?”

They could hear sound of rescue helicopters outside, but nobody attempted to move to the deck, as the crew continued to make announcements over the intercom telling them not to move.

As time went on, some students came close to tears, saying “My legs hurt,” “I am scared,” “I miss my mother.” Others tried to calm them, saying “Don’t worry, we will survive. We will return alive.”

They seemed to have believed that they would soon be rescued, as long as they did what they were told to by the crew.

But this was already after Captain Lee Joon-seok and a number of the ship’s crew had already escaped from the Sewol. Among the first to be rescued at around 9.30 a.m., the captain and his crew left behind over 300 teenagers in the cabins below deck.

Other clips show similar scenes to Park’s. Students stayed in their places as instructed to do over intercom and played with each other, indicating that they could not detect how severe and dangerous the situation is.

These and other clips filmed by students and other passengers are expected to become critical evidence proving that crewmembers neglected their duty to evacuate passengers first.

The investigation team has collected eight mobile phones and is working on recovering content including videos and Kakao Talk messages to see if more specific circumstances of the sunken ferry can be found.

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