A girl pays tribute to the victims of the sunken ferry, Sewol, at a temporary memorial at the auditorium of the Olympic Memorial Museum in Ansan, south of Seoul. AP Photo
By STEVE HAN
The anguished families of those still missing from the sunken South Korean ferry surrounded the fisheries minister and the coast guard chief Thursday to prevent them from leaving the area in Jindo where relatives have gathered to hear the latest about the search, the Associated Press reports.
Some yelled at South Korea’s Oceans and Fisheries Minister Lee Ju-young, coast guard chief Kim Seok-kyun and deputy chief Choi Sang-hwan, and accused them of lying about the rescue operation, according to AP. They also demanded that the search for the missing continue through the night, as many other relatives at the scene just wept.
“We are doing our work and we, too, feel the way you do,” Kim told the families, according to AP. “We are trying to bring all the equipment that we can.”
[ad#300]
The death toll from the tragedy off of South Korea’s southeastern coast is now at 181, and the number of missing at 121. Dashing any remaining hope of finding survivors is the fact that rescue divers still haven’t found any air pockets inside the ship, which capsized on April 16. About 80 percent of the dead and missing were students at Danwon High School in Ansan.
The frustration level among the distraught families of the missing has grown, with many believing that the South Korean government offered inadequate protection for the ferry’s passengers. Some have questioned whether the accident occurred because the ferry was carrying far more cargo than it should have been, as a lawmaker from the New Politics Alliance for Democracy, an opposition party, said he has documents proving that the ferry was carrying more than three-and-a-half times more cargo than allowed, AP reported.
Meanwhile, the identity of the mysterious man who owns the sunken ferry has piqued the media’s curiosity. Yoo Byung-eun, known as the “millionaire with no face,” owns Chonghaejin Marines Co. and also carries an alias as a nature photographer working under the pseudonym Ahae, CNN reported. KoreAm ran a short story about Ahae back in 2011, when his nature photographs were on display in New York City.
Back in 1987, Yoo was at the center of controversy as a preacher and a religious cult leader, when 33 of his followers were found dead in what was investigated as a mass murder suicide. However, authorities found no evidence to prove that he was directly involved in the deaths.
