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Families end sit-in after KBS apology over remarks on ferry accident

May 9, 2014

Family members of the victims of the sunken ferry Sewol and citizens sit on the street near the presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 9, 2014. Family members marched to the presidential Blue House in Seoul early Friday calling for a meeting with President Park Geun-hye but ended up sitting on streets near the presidential palace after police officers blocked them. Park’s office said a senior presidential official plans to meet them later Friday. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

(Yonhap) — Families of students killed in a ferry sinking ended a sit-in near the presidential office after the president of state-funded television network KBS apologized for “inappropriate remarks” by his subordinate about the accident.

About 120 family members, mostly parents of student victims, attempted to march toward the presidential office of Cheong Wa Dae in the early hours of Friday, clutching memorial portraits of their children and demanding a meeting with President Park Geun-hye.

As their march was blocked by riot police, the angry relatives staged a sit-in at a street corner a few hundred meters from Cheong Wa Dae, demanding a public apology from the KBS president and the termination of an editor who made the controversial remarks.

The director of KBS’ news bureau allegedly told his junior reporters that the more than 300 fatalities from the April 16 sinking was not a large number compared with the annual number of people killed in traffic accidents.

The families voluntarily dispersed and returned to Ansan, the city south of Seoul where the official memorial hall for the students is located, after KBS President Gil Hwan-young visited the site of the rally and apologized.

“I’m really sorry that the KBS news bureau director deeply hurt your hearts with his inappropriate remarks,” Gil said, bowing to the families.

The KBS editor behind the remarks also offered to resign, and Gil vowed to immediately accept the resignation offer during his visit.

The apology came hours after two senior presidential officials met with the visiting families.

Park Joon-woo, senior political affairs secretary, and Lee Jung-hyun, senior press secretary, held a meeting with representatives of the families at Cheong Wa Dae and heard their demands, officials said.

Details of the meeting were not immediately known.

The Sewol capsized and sank off while traveling from Incheon to the southern resort island of Jeju on April 16, leaving 302 passengers dead or missing.

More than three weeks after the sinking, 31 people remain unaccounted for. Most of the victims were high school students on a field trip.

The Park government has come under continued criticism for its handling of the disaster as well as lax oversight that is seen to have compromised the safety of the passengers on board.

During hours of confrontation with police near Cheong Wa Dae, the relatives unveiled a video allegedly taken with a mobile phone by a student trapped inside the sunken vessel, seven hours after the sinking.

The video showed two students in life jackets sitting inside the upturned vessel side by side, calmly waiting for the arrival of rescue workers.

“This video was shot at 6:38 p.m. on the day of the accident. The accident occurred in the morning but nobody from the Coast Guard and Navy went under water to save people,” one of the relatives said.

It instantly drew the attention of netizens who believe a faster initial response could have saved many more lives.

But some others raised the possibility that the time of shooting could have been incorrectly recorded due to a technological error, saying the light in the video is too bright for footage taken inside a submerged ship.

The government’s emergency task force said it was trying to determine if the relatives’ claim about the video is true.