Supreme Court upholds acquittals of Coast Guard officials for Sewol response

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the acquittals of several former Coast Guard officials indicted on charges related to failed rescue efforts during the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking.

Bereaved families of the Sewol ferry sinking and civic group members on Thursday denounce the Supreme Court's ruling that acquitted former Korea Coast Guard officers indicted over the failed rescue effort in the Sewol ferry sinking in front of the top court in Seocho District, southern Seoul. [NEWS1]

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the acquittals of several former Coast Guard officials indicted on charges related to failed rescue efforts during the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking.

The decision comes nine years after the disaster claimed more than 300 lives.

The top court upheld a lower court’s acquittal of 11 former Korea Coast Guard officials indicted for professional negligence in February 2020 for failing to rescue passengers from the stricken ferry.

Prosecutors argued that their negligence led to the deaths of 303 passengers, mostly high school students en route to Jeju for a school trip.

The court on Thursday ruled that “there was no misunderstanding of the law" in the lower courts' acquittals of the officials, including Kim Suk-kyoon, the former chief of the Korea Coast Guard.

The 11 officers were indicted and initially tried nearly six years after the tragedy after prosecutors launched a special probe into suspicions regarding the Sewol ferry sinking in 2019.

As such, the top court's ruling on Thursday makes Kim Kyung-il, the captain of the first Korea Coast Guard ship to arrive at the scene, the only one convicted of criminal charges for failing to rescue passengers from the sinking.

He was sentenced to three years in prison in November 2015 after a trial immediately after the tragedy.

The special investigative team later indicted the 11 other officers, accusing them as joint principal offenders.

However, the lower courts ruled they were not responsible for the incident.

The Seoul High Court in February ruled it would have been “difficult for the 11 officers to predict that passengers would have stayed inside the ferry when they were close to drowning.”

An attorney who has dealt with large-scale disaster cases told the JoongAng Ilbo that “those closer to the accident site are more likely to be punished for causing deaths and injuries by occupational negligence.”

The families of the Sewol ferry victims denounced the top court’s “unacceptable” rulings.

“The fact that the senior officers, who should have actively taken responsibility, didn’t know about the situation itself is an issue of accountability,” the family members said at a press conference right after the court’s rulings.

“The court should not have excused them by saying they would not have known [about the situation on the ferry], but instead should have asked why they did not try to figure out the situation.”

“The ruling has set a precedent where the country no longer protects the lives and safety of its citizens, and the country is not taking responsibility even if innocent lives are sacrificed,” said Kim Jong-ki, chairman of the steering committee of the 4/16 Sewol Families for Truth and A Safer Society.

The top court on the same day handed down a suspended sentence of three years in prison to the former head of the Mokpo Coast Guard, Kim Moon-hong, and a suspended sentence of two years to former captain Lee Jae-du of ship 3009 for tampering with evidence related to the Sewol ferry sinking disaster.

BY CHO JUNG-WOO [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]