South Korea Ship News Update: The captain of the South Korean ferry, Sewol, which overturned on Wednesday has been arrested after he was pictured abandoning ship in a disaster which has left hundreds missing, Daily Mail reported.
According to New York Times, the captain, Lee Jun-seok, 69, was charged with abandoning the boat and its passengers at a time of crisis according to prosecutors. Mr. Lee as well as the third mate, a 26-year-old woman who the authorities said was steering the ship at the time of accident on Wednesday, and another crew member were taken to jail with their hands cuffed after a judge approved their arrest warrants. The crew members also faced numerous charges.
"I bow before the people and grieved families and apologize," Mr. Lee told reporters as he was directed to jail.
Investigators said that Mr. Lee, was not at the steering house when the Sewol tilted and began sinking on Wednesday morning.
Park Jae-uk, a senior investigator said "He temporarily left the steering command to his third shipmate." He added that the captain returned to the bridge as soon as the ship began tilting.
The helm was left to the ship's third mate, who according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, had a year of experience steering ships, five months of it on the 6,825-ton Sewol.
New York Times reported that as hope diminished in finding the 236 missing students alive, their high school was stunned Friday by more tragic news, the death of its vice principal in what was suspected to be a suicide.
The vice principal, Kang Min-kyu, 52, of Danwon High School, who survived the accident, was found hanging from a tree near a gymnasium where families of the missing had gathered. The police suspected Mr. Kang had hanged himself.
According to the police, a note was found in his wallet that stated, "It's too much, being alive alone while more than 200 of my students are missing. Please place all the blame on me because I was in charge of the trip. Please cremate my body and scatter the ashes where the ship sank. Perhaps I should be a teacher for those missing children in the other world."
On Friday, South Korean divers managed to enter the sunken ferry where many of the 273 missing people were feared to have been trapped when the ship sank. But officials warned Friday that the work would be painstaking and difficult, New York Times stated.
One of the leaders of the diving effort, Hwang Dae-sik, a senior official with the Maritime Rescue and Salvage Association said that underwater visibility at the site was so poor and currents so rapid that the work was "like moving against the wind of a typhoon while barely being able to see your palm."
In an interview, Mr. Hwang said, "Currents were moving diagonally across the hull, creating swirls and making it tricky for divers to enter the ship. We have been trying to put ropes into the ship so that we can use them as guides as we crawl into the ship in the darkness and hopefully bring out missing people."
South Korean coast guard officials say they've found three more bodies from the sinking of a ferry, raising the death toll to 32.
