Sewol Update May 2015

In March, the pre-announcement of legislation of the enforcement ordinance for the Special Sewol Bill, the “Special Law on Fact-finding of the April 16 Sewol Ferry Disaster and Building of a Safe Society,” was made by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries. However, the bereaved families alleged that the law should be abrogated.

The Special Sewol Bill is designed to seek the truth about the causes of the disaster in accordance with the sinking of the Sewol Ferry ongoing processes, including the search and rescue operations,  salvage, follow-up steps, identifying those responsible for the disaster, providing support for the victims, establishing preventive measures and countermeasures against disasters and to build a safer society.

The enforcement ordinance of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries stipulates that the government will conduct research, analysis and investigations to seek the truth about the April 16 Sewol Ferry disaster, which can presumably focus on analyzing the results of the governmental research rather than on discovering the facts about the disaster without interventions.

Although the Sewol Special Bill is to identify causes of this tragic disaster, clarify responsibilities and establish countermeasures for making a safer society to prevent further disasters, the enforcement ordinance provides plans to prevent marine accidents, such as laws, systems, policies and customs, instead of general plans for making a safer society whose articles might put a limit on these roles.

The bereaved families protested against the government’s draft enforcement ordinance of the Sewol Special Bill, which was suppressed by governmental authority wielded by the Korean police. Even one year after the occurrence of the disaster, the bereaved families are still calling for a prompt, intact salvage of the sunken ship, abrogation of the enforcement ordinance of the presidential decree that hinders fact-finding efforts, agreement on the draft enforcement ordinance of the Special Investigation Committee, continued  search operations for those still missing following salvage of the sunken ferry  and condemning the government for impeding efforts to seek the truth concerning this disaster.

Parts of the article were extracted from lawyer Kim Joon-hyun’s contribution to the newspaper of the Journalists Association of Korea on April 8, 2015 titled, “Fruitless Enforcement Ordinance of the Special Sewol Bill.”