Questions remain over who is responsible for Uiam Lake victims
Soldiers carry out a search operation near Nami Island in Chuncheon, Saturday, to search for missing persons from three capsized vessels near Uiam Dam Thursday. / Yonhap
By Jun Ji-hye
The capsizing of three boats near Uiam Dam in Chuncheon, which left three dead and three missing as of Sunday, is raising questions about who ordered the victims to work on Uiam Lake despite swollen water levels following heavy precipitation since last week.
The victims, including police officers and city officials, were working to fix an artificial island floating on the lake to prevent it from being carried away by flooding, and were believed to have been swept away through one of the dam's open gates at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, when it was opened to release water as a flood prevention measure.
The Chuncheon City Government in Gangwon Province spent 1.4 billion won ($1.2 million) earlier this year in constructing the island filled with aquatic plants, expecting it to purify the lake water and attract more tourists.
Family members of the dead and missing persons have asked the city government to explain why the victims had to work on the site in such a dangerous situation, with some of them claiming that officials pressured the victims to fix the island, which costs a large amount of money.
They cited text messages sent by the officials to the victims as evidence.
In one text message sent a day before the incident, a city official asked one of the missing persons “to take care of the artificial island's safety as Soyang River Dam near Uiam Dam has begun releasing water.”
Family members of another missing person also claimed that somebody ordered the victims to go to the site, citing the content of a conversation recorded by a black box in the car of the missing person.
“We wonder who ordered them to go there,” one family member said in a media briefing, Saturday, noting that the black box was submitted to police.
Regarding the issue, the Chuncheon City Government gave a vague answer, saying there was no way it could know who ordered the work, adding that the truth will be unearthed through a police investigation.
Chuncheon Mayor Lee Jae-soo said, “We are separately carrying out our own investigation as well to find out whether there were any legal violations. If we find any, we will hold those involved responsible.”
With public anger to the incident boiling over, a petition calling on Lee to step down was posted Saturday on a website run by the presidential office.
“If nobody in the city government wants to take responsibility, its head should shoulder the responsibility,” the petitioner wrote.