On the afternoon of April 15, 2014, 311 students from South Korea's Tan Won High School boarded a cruise ship docked at Incheon Port . They will head to the famous Korean attraction Jeju Island to start their graduation trip .
On the eve of the students boarding the ship
Sewol was originally scheduled to depart at 6:30 pm, but the heavy fog that night caused the visibility of the sea to be less than 1 kilometer, so the Incheon Aviation Control Center issued a low visibility alarm, and all ships in the port suspended flights. At 8:30 pm, the Aviation Control Center retracted the alarm.
The port of that night
After the port of that night, the Sewon applied to leave the port, and the Sewon was the only ship leaving the port that night.
sailing in this weather is dangerous, but the Sewol is not just a passenger ship, and this voyage is not just for these high school students. It is also is also a cargo ship , carrying a large amount of cargo, including cars, large containers, etc., so suspending flights will be a loss for shipping companies. This is also the reason why the Sewol insists on leaving the port.
Seigo full of containers
Shortly after departure, Tanyuan High School students, led by their teachers, gathered in the lobby on the third floor of the cruise ship, took turns playing games, singing happily, and watched the fireworks show on the deck. This was a pleasant and romantic trip for the students who had been studying nervously after several years.
The Sewol Ho in the evening
The sailing of this night is normal, and no one can imagine what will happen next.
The next day
The next morning, most of the students just got up. At 7:30 in the morning, the cruise ship entered the Menggu Waterway . Menggu Waterway is one of the most intense waterways along South Korea.
Menggu Waterway
Because this waterway is between two high grounds on the submarine continental shelf, the water flows through it, bringing a " bottleneck effect ", allowing passing ships to feel the sudden acceleration of the water flow and are prone to accidents.
Flight position
But experienced crew members can allow the ship to use the water flow here to accelerate the ship's navigation. For the Sevy, who was already two hours late, they chose to do so.
At this time, it was not the captain, the first mate and the second mate who controlled the Sawon voyage, but the third female mate named Park Hanjie , and she did not have much experience in sailing.
Park Hanjie
When the Seyoku passed through the Han bone waterway, Park Hanjie first asked the ship to switch from autonomous driving to manual driving, and then asked the crew to adjust the course from 135 degrees to 140 degrees, and then quickly ordered to adjust it to 145 degrees to cope with the rapid turbulence.
But just as the ship turned left under her command, the entire cruise ship suddenly tilted to the left. The crew in the turbine room also said through the intercom, " rudder wheel cannot move ". Then the power of the entire ship began to disappear, and the cruise ship stopped on the sea in an inclined posture.
Through the description of the later survivors, they heard a loud noise at 8:50 in the morning , and then the cruise ship suddenly tilted to the left, and everything in the cabin flew up. Many students who were eating in the restaurant were thrown into the corner. The students were hit, injured and bleeding, and almost everyone was injured and started crying and screaming.
The ship tilted instantly
Due to the sudden tilt and the drop of the container on the ship, the Sewol lost its center of gravity recovery force, that is, it could not return to the right after the tilt. The ship began to sink slowly. The captain at that time was called Li Junxiu . When the accident occurred, he was sleeping in the room , and then hurried to the cab.
After the accident, the captain began to try to save the ship
He began to try to return the ship by releasing the left ballast water . However, it was found that it did not work. The Segoyle began to float on the sea in an increasingly larger and larger position, tilted posture, and . At this time, the ship happened to be in the rapids of the Mengguhai Channel. The Segoylele began to drift north at a speed of 1.7 knots, and the situation became more and more urgent.
After the incident, the Sewol
After the accident, the captain made an amazing decision after sending a call for help to the nearby navigation center. He did not comfort the students and provide necessary rescue immediately. instead told the crew that they would abandon the ship immediately , and asked the crew to publish a broadcast, which was:
broadcast content
Because of this broadcast, many students either stayed in the restaurant or stayed in the room and closed the cabin door. Many students did not realize the seriousness of the matter. They also posted the video taken in the cabin online, believing that someone would come to save them soon, and they had no idea that the god of death had slowly approached.
Screenshot of the cabin video sent by the students
Rescue
At 9:30 in the morning, the navigation control center after receiving the rescue signal notified the nearby coast guard. The coast guard sent a ship near the Sewol and released the lifeboat . At this time, the sea water had flooded the second deck. The coast guard rescued the waiting personnel on the deck. These first people who were rescued, were all crew members of the Sewol and .
This includes the captain Lee Junxi, and Lee Junxi did not indicate his identity or the specific situation on the ship at that time.
The first batch of rescued included the captain
After a while, the sea water began to flow backwards, the hull tilted to 60 degrees, and many teachers began to rescue students, but most of the students closed the hatch because the room was still scrolling to play the broadcast, "Please stay where you are, don't come out."
Most of the students are still in the cabin
, and the location of the accident in the Sewol is not on the high seas, but near the coastline of South Korea, only a few hundred meters away from the nearest island. Logically speaking, rescue ships can arrive soon.
. After the captain was rescued ashore, he explained the situation to the coast guard personnel. The coast guard began to organize rescue to the passengers on the ship and asked for help from the Third Fleet of the South Korean Navy.
Sewol Captain
At this time, it would be too naive if the students expected the coast guard to save them, because the coast guard was nearby. Except for the rescue of the captain and several crew members, they did not see them perform any rescue to the students on the ship for a long time. The coast guard did not rescue further because they did not receive specific orders and the rescue was chaotic. Moreover, civil divers were once banned from approaching the Segoyle.
Coast Guard
A female crew member named Park Ji-young (22 years old) who stayed on the boat asked the students to put on life jackets through the broadcast. When several students asked her why she didn't get off the boat, she said that the crew member wanted the last one to get off the boat, and Park Ji-young was unable to survive because of saving the students.
Brave and beautiful crew member Park Ji-young
10:01, the hull was tilted to 70 degrees, and the sea water flowed backwards of became more and more serious. Several passengers on the deck realized that it was impossible to wait for rescue, so they began to pull the fire water pipes open and pulled the students trapped below to the deck one by one. About 40 students were pulled to the corridor of the fourth deck.
The helicopter only rescued a few people on the deck
10:15, the hull was inclined more than 90 degrees, and many passengers began to escape, but many students in the cabin still did not come out. Only a few students opened the cabin door and bravely climbed to the inclined deck. These students were a small number of people who were rescued, and the ones who rescued them were not the Korean Coast Guard, but the fishing boats coming from nearby .
Fishing boats began to save people
10:17, the hull was inclined more than 100 degrees, and the sea water was not over most of the cabins. At this time, the students discovered that it was impossible for them to think of it. Sea water had appeared on the porthole of . Even if they wanted to open the cabin door, the pressure of the sea water did not allow them to open it, and there was a lot of crying in the room.
hull tilt is very serious
0 The parents on the shore are anxious. On the one hand, they do not know the rescue situation, but on the other hand, they receive text messages (photographs) from their children.
Parents on the shore
10:21, the Sewol completely turned over less than two hours after the accident. The bottom of the ship was facing upward, and it was difficult for any passengers to escape on their own.
hull is completely turned upside down on the sea
Korean Navy also learned about the accident and sent a shipwreck rescue team known as South Korea to the scene, but they did not carry diving equipment and did not even bring scuba because they did not know that the ship had capsized into this way. It was not until 2:40 pm that the Navy sent another 40 divers.
Korean Navy divers
However, these divers stopped rescue because the water flow was too fast.
At the same time, South Korea's official department corresponding to this accident has as many as a dozen , but none of them have leadership skills and no accident commander. All departments have not correctly grasped the information on the scene, so the rescue was chaotic at the beginning.
Officials began to apologize
Rescue operations have a lot to do with a person, that is, the then South Korean President Park Geun-hye . Park Geun-hye only learned about the Sewo accident at 10 am. At this time, the accident had occurred for more than an hour. The reason was that Park Geun-hye asked all reports to her at that time to not use telephone and verbal notifications, and all must be in written form by fax.
Park Geun-hye
This way, it was already 10 o'clock when the documents were in her hands. What's more exaggerated is that after receiving the documents, Park Geun-hye did not arrange rescue immediately, nor did she designate the rescue person in charge. disappeared for 7 hours (it was later confirmed to be a political crisis that might be caused by the accident). This was not the case, and 7 hours of valuable rescue time were wasted. The various departments in South Korea did not coordinate and fought for themselves.
A large number of ships surrounded the Sewol
till 11 o'clock in the morning, that is, after the ship completely capsized, the Ministry of Defense suddenly reported to South Korean Presidential Office , "History 3 personnel were all rescued, and no casualties were ". At this time, the media that had been waiting began to announce to the public that all the students on the Sewol were rescued, but the parents were very angry because they knew that their children were not rescued at all.
This wrong consultation was reported for 50 minutes, which was a serious false alarm incident. It once made the public lightly sentence the severity of the accident, and many civilian ships began to evacuate the scene.
At 5:15 pm, President Park Geun-hye made her first appearance after 7 hours of disappearance. His first sentence after arriving at the Seoul Security Building was "I heard that all students are wearing life jackets. Is it that difficult to save?"
Park Geun-hye's various behaviors after the incident were considered extremely cold-blooded by parents, and her approval rating also dropped sharply.
On the third day, more than 300 passengers on the ship had no hope of survival. The civil divers were allowed to come to the Sewol at this time. Underwater, they saw bodies floating in the ship through the porthole. Only then did the parents learn that the government did nothing in the three days after the accident and were extremely angry.
Folk diver
Finally, South Korea's official stopped rescue and announced the results of the accident. 1304 people, including 250 students, were killed , and the death rate was as high as 63.8% .
On the third day, the bow of the ship was completely raised
and was rescued, one was the deputy principal of Tanyuan High School, , . Three days later, someone found him hanging himself on a hillside near the school, the police found a suicide note in his wallet, which read: "More than 200 people have unknown life and death. I have no confidence to live alone. All the responsibility lies with me. It is me who planned this On graduation trip, please scatter my ashes in the waters where the incident occurred, so that I can be with those students who have no bones and continue to be their teachers in the underworld."
Vice Principal
After the accident, the South Korean prosecutor began to hold responsibility and listed 99 people, including the captain and crew shipping company and shipping management agency, as the subjects of investigation, and 53 people were finally found guilty.
Among them, the biggest response was the captain Li Junxi, who abandoned the ship and fled immediately. After investigation, Li Junxi was temporarily transferred to the Sewol, and the original captain of the Sewol was Shin Shangqiu, but he had a conflict with the shipping company and was dismissed.
The captain Li Junxi, who was arrested,
When an accident occurred, Captain Li Junxi violated an unwritten rule of sailing at sea for hundreds of years. When encountering a shipwreck, the captain must be the last person to leave the ship. This statement is also based on a professional ethical consensus. As a person with specific responsibilities, it is necessary for the captain to do his best to ensure the safety of passengers during shipwreck.
Finally, the South Korean prosecutor accused Captain Lee Junxiu of violating the Shipwreck Rescue Act, neglecting his duties, , not reporting, abandoning death, etc., and finally sentenced him to life imprisonment .
Other crew members were sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from 1 year to 12 years.
Park Hanjie, who drove the ship, was sentenced to 7 years in prison
cargo ship owner
Not only that, the Sewon cruise ship also has serious problems. The Sewon belongs to the South Korean Cheonghai Town Maritime Transportation Company, and the president is Yu Bingyan . He is very responsible for the accident. In 2012, he purchased a Japanese cargo ship built in 1994 and then renovated it for four months.
From the picture, it can be seen that the Japanese cargo ship was originally like the original appearance and the transformed Segovian on the right. It can be found that the rear of the hull is much higher than before. This is because in order to be able to load cargo, Yu Bingyan, the owner of the shipping company, transformed the original bottom cabin into a cargo hold. Then, on the upper part of the cargo hold, has added a four-layer cabin . The modified cargo hold, according to regulations, needs to be strengthened with bulkhead , but in order to save money, he did not do it.
vs.
large-scale transformations such as
also require acceptance by relevant institutions to pass, and Korean classification society conducted two acceptances on the Sewol, and both were successfully passed. Subsequent professionals pointed out that such transformations cannot be passed, which shows that the shipping company and related institutions have a lot of collusion with interests.
Sewol can only load up to 987 tons of cargo according to the tonnage, but on the day of the incident, it loaded 2142 tons of cargo, and crazily overloaded 1155 tons of cargo. In order to load so many cargo, Sewol discharged more than 1,000 tons of on the ship. You should know that the ballast water is to maintain the balance of the ship, and the water injected specifically, and the cargo is replaced with the cargo, just like ballast water, which cannot be distributed evenly to the entire hull, which leads to accidents being easily caused during the hull.
blue is ballast water
. Such behavior is caused by the shipping company's eagerness for quick success and short-term benefits, and the pursuit of short-term benefits. This is because of this operation, which was a serious violation from the beginning. Therefore, the captain of the Sewol, Shin Shangqiu, reported the hull's stability many times, and complained to the company about the excessive transformation of the hull, but it was useless to report it multiple times. Finally, he reported to the newspaper. After the company found out, he suspended it, which led to Li Junxi's temporary office.
The Sewol crew member
What is even more exaggerated is that President Yu Bingyan's personal hobby is photography, but it is at the level of an ordinary person. In order to appreciate himself, he built a private gallery at the end of the Sewol to display his photography works.
, and this gallery uses 7 tons of marble to create its gorgeous style. The sudden increase in weight at the stern makes the cruise ship extremely dangerous during the driving process.
Stern Gallery
Investigation
The South Korean official explained that the Sewol was an accident caused by steering error and the reduction in resilience caused by the transformation of the hull, so the captain and crew were arrested, and the transformation of the hull pointed to Yu Bingyan, the owner of the shipping company, and the South Korean prosecutor issued an arrest notice to him, and Yu Bingyan, who knew he could not escape, began to flee early. The South Korean police initially set the reward amount to 0 million won (270,000 yuan) .
Shipping company CEO Yu Bingyan
Finally received a report that someone found a corrupt body in the wilderness of Jeolla South Dock. It was finally identified as Yu Bingyan, but someone quickly raised questions. In 2 months, the body could not have been corrupted so quickly. It is suspected that it was South Korean officials who are sheltering Yu Bingyan, and Yu Bingyan may still be alive.
found the suspected
The parents could not let go of the cause of the accident given by the South Korean official. They spontaneously organized an investigation committee. After two years of evidence collection, the committee finally roughly understood the truth of the Sewol accident. It turned out that not all crew members on the Sewol knew that the ship was overloaded. Because of this serious violation, the fewer people knew about the overload, so no one except the captain Lee Junxi and the first mate.
Since the Sewol was two hours later than the scheduled departure time, the captain Lee Junxi and the first mate had discussed whether to speed up the journey at night, but considering that the fog in the Shanghai surface had not completely dissipated at night, they gave up their plan to travel at night. The next morning, the third deputy Park Hanjie, the helmsman and the chief engineer were controlling the ship. The three of them did not know the overload situation, and the third deputy Park Hanjie had serious lack of experience in navigation.
Park Hanjie
At that time, the weather on the sea surface was good, so the third mate Park Hanjie had been using autonomous driving. However, when it came to the Hangu Waterway, the water flow increased, and she switched to manual driving because she was "learned" by the captain and the first mate. The Hangu Waterway had a turbulent waterway. Manual driving was required here, and it was safe to continuously adjust navigation.
However, this was the first time Park Hanjie drove a ship independently in two years. At least the captain or the first mate was commanding next to her. At this time, she was completely blindly operating, causing the ship to lose control.
Waste location
Through the later track replay of the AIS system, it will be found that Park Han made several large turnes in order to fight the ocean currents. She did not know that the overloaded ship of was easily overturned. . Sure enough, when a left turn at 8:55, the unfixed container on the upper part of the ship fell into the sea under the action of inertia. This is why the survivor later heard a loud noise. This was the sound of dozens of containers that were thrown down on the left and hit the port side of the ship. The subsequent salvage also confirmed that the Sewol did not hit the sea reef or underwater object.
The Segoyle
was salvaged as a whole. From the surveillance video exposed later, it can be seen that when the ship turned last, the cargo hold on the inside was suddenly thrown aside, and the cargo hold with no bulkhead reinforcement had been broken and water was quickly broken after the impact of these cars. It can be seen that the water inflow was very fast. This is why the Segoyle sinks particularly quickly after capsizing.
In-ship monitoring (black box) shows that water inflows quickly after the impact
It can be said that this accident will happen sooner or later. The previous captain saw such potential risks, and complained again and again, but the shipping company ignored it because the interests are above everything else. This time, the captain of the Sewon captain's dereliction of duty, the third deputy's wrong operation, coupled with the illegal transformation of the hull, serious overloading and inaction by the regulatory authorities, led to the Sewon tragedy.
The previously rumored statements such as "blood sacrifice" and "impacting a submarine" on the Internet are not reliable. The real cause of the accident is already very clear and there is no need for the so-called conspiracy theory to explain it.
Why don’t the students run away?
However, with the overturn of the Sewol, even though the sea water had poured into the cabin, most of the students remained in the room following the instructions broadcast on the ship. Most of them did not open the door, and only a few students who did not follow the instructions to climb onto the top of the boat or jump into the water were rescued.
Why do these students still not escape even though they know the danger? This is the Sewol incident, an important reminder to us, herd psychology .
Herdesma mentality means that individual behavior will give up their own opinions or go against their hearts under the influence or pressure of most people, so as to keep themselves consistent with the whole.
Another one is Authoritative effect . Students lack social experience and tend to obey the teachings of school teachers or authoritative people when encountering problems. For example, radio is a "authoritative effect" for them. So in the Sevyon incident, why those students did not escape when facing danger and insisted on staying in the room was exactly what they obeyed these mentalities.
So, while understanding these accidents, we must also understand what we should do if we face danger. Herd mentality does not mean that we are independent and different for the sake of different things, but that we must have our own thinking and judgment on certain issues. People's cognition is constantly improving through repeated thinking. We can also see that even if people think about protecting themselves when facing crises, there are still brave people who will stand up, such as the female crew member named Park Ji-young. If there are more people like this, the ending of the Sewo may be very different .
Finally, when we face nature, we must have awe. Nature is beautiful and ruthless. I hope such a tragedy will never happen again.
