Parents of Korean ferry victims attack top official

Angry parents of victims of South Korea's ferry disaster assaulted a top official on Thursday, accusing him of lying about efforts to retrieve bodies still trapped in the submerged ship.

About 20 relatives of the victims attacked Choi Sang-Hwan, deputy head of the Korea Coastguard, after storming his temporary office at Jindo port, an AFP journalist on the scene said. 

They forced their way through some 10 officers blocking the entrance and pounced on Choi as he sat behind a desk, punching him in the face and body.

They then grabbed him by the neck and pulled him out of the office.

Ripping his shirt, they took him to a nearby tent -- calling for his superior Kim Suk-Kyun, the coastguard chief, to meet them there.

The parents held Choi for a while, with some mothers slapping him continuously, until Kim arrived.

Parents then forced the coastguard chiefs to tell their officers by radio to mobilise more divers and speed up efforts to recover bodies.

There is widespread anger among families over the slowness of initial rescue efforts after the ferry sank on April 16 with 476 people on board, most of them high school students.

It took divers working in difficult and dangerous conditions more than two days to get into the sunken ferry and two more days to retrieve the first bodies.

The confirmed death toll on Thursday stood at 171, but 131 were still missing and believed inside the ship.

Violence broke out on Thursday after the relatives went out by boat to inspect operations at the site where the 6,825-tonne Sewol capsized.
"You guys said hundreds of divers were working there, but we only saw a few there today," a mother screamed at Choi.

The parents demanded that closed-circuit TVs be set up for them to watch rescue efforts live.

Classes resume at school scarred by ferry disaster

Senior classes resumed on Thursday at the South Korean high school devastated by the loss of around 250 students in a ferry disaster that has made the school a focus of profound national grief.

The final-year students from Danwon High School in Ansan city just south of Seoul returned to their classrooms which have remained empty since the ferry carrying 325 students on a school trip to the southern resort island of Jeju capsized and sank on April 16.

Junior classes will start next Monday, a provincial education official said, adding that he was "unsure" when the surviving members of the 11th grade class -- which was taken on the Jeju trip -- would resume their studies.

Across the road from the school, thousands of people paid their respects for a second day at a special memorial to the student victims in an indoor sports stadium.

More than 12,000 mourners visited the memorial when it opened on Wednesday.

Danwon High students made up the vast majority of the 476 people on board the Sewol ferry and an even larger portion of the victims.

Of the 174 people who were rescued only 75 were students.

Prosecutors raid shipping safety watchdogs

South Korean prosecutors said on Thursday that they had raided shipping safety watchdogs as part of expanded investigations following the sinking of a ferry last week in which more than 300 people were killed or missing presumed dead.

"The objective was to investigate malpractices and corruption in the entire shipping industry," Song In-taek, head deputy chief prosecutor at Incheon District Prosecution Service, told reporters.

The Korea Register of Shipping, which is in charge of testing and certifying ships, and the Korea Shipping Association (KSA), which is responsible for routine shipment inspections, were not immediately available for comment.

Prosecutors raided the register's headquarters in the southern port city of Busan on Thursday. Yonhap news agency said investigations would look at the possibility of corruption in testing ships and whether bribes were paid.

The raid on the KSA took place on Wednesday when prosecutors also raided the home of Yoo Byung-un, the head of a family that owns the Chonghaejin Marine Co. Ltd, the company that operated the ship.

"The company will fully cooperate with the investigation," Kim Jae-beom, an official at Chonghaejin, told Reuters by telephone.

The finances of Chonghaejin and its complex share structure have come into the spotlight since the disaster. Yoo was jailed for fraud for four years in the early 1990s.

Asked if Yoo had gone overseas, prosecutors said he was still in South Korea but they had yet to contact him.

The financial watchdog and prosecutors are looking into the assets of Yoo's family for any possible embezzlement, prosecutors added.


 

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.