Court orders compensation for victims of Sewol ferry disaster
Family members of the victims from the Sewol sinking shed tears while talking to reporters at the Seoul Central District Court, Thursday, after a court ruling ordering the government and Chonghaejin Marine to compensate them for the maritime disaster. / Yonhap
By Lee Suh-yoon
More than four years after the sinking of the ferry Sewol – in which 304 people were killed – a court ordered the state and ferry operator to compensate the victim's families, Thursday,
The Seoul Central District Court ruled that 200 million won ($176,000) should be provided to each victim's family and an additional 40 million won to the parents. The court also ordered compensations of between 5 million to 80 million won to other family members, depending on their relationship to the victim.
With an estimate of the deceased's lost income added to this figure, each family is to receive around 600 million won ($530,000) in compensation.
“Chonghaejin Marine allowed the ferry Sewol to set sail in an overloaded and defective state,” said Judge Lee Sang-hyun. “And the state maritime police failed to uphold its responsibility to protect the life and safety of citizens.”
“From around 8:50 a.m. until the ship completely sank at 10 a.m., the victims must have been subject to intense terror and suffering,” he added.
Donning yellow vests and ribbons, parents of the Danwon High School students who died inside the vessel anxiously filed into the small courtroom before the ruling.
As the verdict was announced, they clutched each other's hands for support. Some shed silent tears.
The 6,825-ton Sewol carrying 476 passengers capsized off the southwestern coast on April 16, 2014. The government came under heavy fire for its botched initial rescue operation.
In 2015, the family members of 118 victims – nearly all of them Danwon High School students – filed a damage suit against the government and Chonghaejin Marine.
The 354 family members of this joint suit refused to accept the government's compensation package of about 150 million won – excluding some 200 million won donated by the public – offered shortly after the incident, in fear that taking this settlement could free the state of legal accountability later on.
“Our family member died for no reason, we could not take the money and just let it end there,” Yoo Kyung-geun, the head of Sewol Victims' Families Committee, told reporters after the court ruling.
“We wanted to make sure the government's wrongs and their legal accountability in this incident was set down in a court verdict – and pave the way for a safer society.”
He added this was only the start, and that the state's liability in the Sewol tragedy is greater than what was recognized in Thursday's ruling.
“It is becoming more apparent that the government chose not to rescue the passengers, not merely fail to rescue them,” Yoo said. “The state and Chonghaejin Marine will probably appeal this ruling, and in the second ruling, I hope the verdict will specify exactly how the government wronged its citizens, and press for greater accountability.”
Shin Youn-rahk, a lawyer who pled the case for the victims' families, also said more work lies ahead to fully expose the government's responsibility in the Sewol disaster.
“This compensation suit only focused on the state's failure to uphold its responsibility to protect citizen's safety,” Shin said. “As more evidence regarding the Sewol disaster is found, other issues such as the government's alleged efforts to intentionally cover up the incident will be dealt with in a separate lawsuit.”