SEOUL: As visiting President Barack Obama offered South Koreans his condolences Friday for the ferry disaster, the South Korean government conceded that some bodies have been misidentified and announced changes to prevent such mistakes from happening again.
There have been several reports in South Korean media this week of bodies going to the wrong families, with the error sometimes caught only after the remains were taken to a funeral home.
An “action plan” released by the government-wide emergency task force acknowledged that “there have been cases where the victims were wrongly transferred.”
Remains will be transferred to families when there is a match using DNA testing or fingerprint or dental records, the task force said.
The transfer will be temporary when a body is matched though identification or physical description, and authorities will wait for more authoritative evidence before making the transfer permanent.
Divers have recovered 183 bodies so far, but 119 remain missing and are feared dead in the dark rooms of the submerged vessel.
Search officials including a navy spokesman and a diver said 35 of the ferry’s 111 rooms have been searched so far, Yonhap news agency reported.
They said 48 of the bodies recovered were found were in a single large room built to accommodate 38.
The ferry sank April 16 on its way from Incheon port to the southern tourist island of Jeju. More than 80 percent of the 302 dead and missing are students from a single high school in Ansan, south of Seoul.
Obama arrived Friday afternoon at the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential residence, and presented President Park Geun-hye with an American flag that flew over the White House the day the ship sank.
His first South Korean visit since Park took office last year was aimed at issues including North Korea, but he noted that his trip comes at a time of “great sorrow.”
“So many were young students with their entire lives ahead of them,” Obama said, invoking his two daughters, both close in age to many of the ferry victims. “I can only imagine what the parents are going through at this point, the in
credible heartache.”
Accepting the flag, Park drew a parallel between the way Americans pulled together after the 9/11 attacks and the resilience of South Koreans following one of the worst maritime disasters in their country’s history.
“The Korean people draw great strength from your kindness,” she said.
Obama also said he was donating a magnolia tree from the White House lawn to Danwon High School in Ansan in honour of the lives lost and as a symbol of friendship between the U.S. and South Korea.
Eleven crew members, including the captain, have been arrested on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need. Prosecutor Yang Jung-jin of the joint investigation team said Friday that the cause of the sinking could be due to excessive veering, improper stowage of cargo, modifications made to the ship and tidal influence. He said investigators will determine the cause by consulting with experts and simulations.
The ferry Sewol was carrying an estimated 3,608 tons of cargo, said Moon Ki-han, a vice president at Union Transport Co., which loaded its cargo.
That’s also more than three times what an inspector who examined the vessel during a redesign said it could safely carry. It also far exceeds what the captain claimed in paperwork: 150 cars and 657 tons of other cargo, according to the coast guard.
The Korean Register of Shipping inspector’s report said that changes made to the ship meant that it had to carry no more than about 1,000 tons of cargo, while taking on more than 2,000 tons of water as ballast to ensure stability.
Before the modifications, the report said, the ship could handle more than 2,500 tons of cargo and needed only about 1,000 tons of water ballast.
Yet the coast guard says shipowner Chonghaejin Marine Co. Ltd. reported cargo capacity of 3,963 tons — a number unchanged from that reported by the Sewol’s previous Japanese owner before the ship was redesigned.
It was unclear why the earlier maximum tonnage noted in the register document was lower than that provided by either owner.
A naval architecture expert said Friday that the reported load could have set the ship tipping over with a significant turn.
Tracking data show the ship turned 45 degrees before sinking, and crew members have reportedly said that they had tried to make a much less severe turn.
“The ship would suddenly fall even with just a small turn. It should not make a sharp turn,” said Lee Kyu Yeul, professor emeritus in ship and offshore plant design at Seoul National University’s Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering.
“It should make a huge circle with 1 or 2 degrees of turn, but (the Sewol) made a small circle. So it fell.”
Officials with South Korea’s maritime ministry and coast guard each said they were not aware of the Sewol’s cargo capacity, and that it was the shipping association’s job to oversee it. The shipping association is private and is partly funded by the industry it regulates.
An official at the shipping association declined to talk to media by phone, saying it is under investigation by prosecutors.
Prosecutors have raided and seized documents at the Korean Register of Shipping and the Korea Shipping Association, which regulates and oversees departures and arrivals of domestic passenger ships, according to officials at both organisations who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak about matters under investigation.--AP
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Obama’s Asia trip off to a bad start with failure to reach agreement on trade in Tokyo
SEOUL — U.S. and Japanese officials gave starkly different assessments Friday on key trade negotiations, as President Obama left Tokyo without a final agreement on a deal to improve access to Japanese markets for U.S. producers.
A senior Obama administration official said the two countries had achieved a “breakthrough” in their effort to help advance a broader, 12-nation free trade accord known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership initiative.
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During the first days of his Asia trip, President Obama told Japanese leaders that Washington is committed to their country’s defense, including islands disputed with China.
As Obama flew from Tokyo to Seoul, the official told reporters on Air Force One that negotiators had set “parameters” for continued talks that could lead to an agreement.
But Akira Amari, a Japanese state minister in charge of the trade talks for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration, said in Tokyo that there were still several unresolved issues.
“We made significant progress, but our positions are still far apart,” Amari told reporters. “We’ll continue talks.”
The White House views the TPP — whose 12 negotiating countries account for 40 percent of global GDP — as a critical component ofObama’s strategy to shift U.S. foreign policyengagement toward the Asia-Pacific.
The failure of the two sides to strike at least the broad outlines of an agreement to allow U.S. producers improved access to Japanese markets for automobiles, beef, poultry, dairy, rice, sugar and wheat was seen as another foreign policy setback for the Obama administration. The president has said the Pacific free trade deal would help U.S. exports and create jobs.
Both Obama and Abe instructed their aides to try to reach an accord during Obama’s state visit, which marked the president’s first stop on a week-long swing through four Asian nations. Negotiators held what senior Obama administration official Ben Rhodes described as “around-the-clock” talks during the past two days, and the issue dominated the bilateral meeting between the two leaders, according to administration officials.
But the trade negotiations have faced intense opposition in both countries. Senate Democrats blocked Obama’s bid in Congress to gain “trade promotion authority,” which would have allowed him to negotiate a deal without lawmakers changing the terms later. Democrats have looked skeptically at the trade deal amid strong opposition from labor unions and environmental groups.
Thea Lee, deputy chief of staff at the AFL-CIO, scoffed Friday at the White House’s contention that a breakthrough had been made.
“For one party to say they’ve made terrific progress afterwards is a little like window dressing,” Lee said, adding that the failure to secure a deal is “good news because these talks are way off track.
“When you are trying to get a last-minute deal, and there’s a time pressure like this, it’s been our experience that important things get thrown under the bus,” Lee said. “We’re relieved they did not attempt to create a phony deal.”
Rhodes insisted that the United States and Japan “have identified a path forward to deal with our bilateral issues in the negotiation” that will also help in negotiations with other nations.
The deal under discussion would allow Japan to maintain some protections for the six politically sensitive market sectors, but the exact shape of the safeguards has yet to be determined, officials said. The senior administration official said that some modest tariff cuts could be phased in quickly, while “the deeper the cut in the tariff, the longer time it may take to get there.”
Some U.S. domestic manufacturers are critical of the concessions the Obama administration is now entertaining, saying the trade deal will allow Japanese competitors to further penetrate the American market without providing the same level of access in return.
“This whole thing has morphed into a question of geopolitics. It’s no longer about trade,” said Steve Biegun, vice president of international government affairs at Ford Motor Co. He added that, given Japan’s insistence on maintaining trade barriers under the deal, “That’s not 21st-century trade, that’s-19th century trade, that’s mercantilism.”
Lori Wallach, a trade expert for Public Citizen, which opposes the TPP, said the talks in Tokyo amounted to a “do-or-die moment” for the administration.
“President Obama coming to your country would ostensibly be the moment that would happen, but it didn’t,” Wallach said. “And they needed to breathe life back into the broader process.”
But the senior administration official, who asked to remain anonymous to be able to describe the status of the talks, said the White House is optimistic that a deal with Japan is within reach, though the aide could not specify when that would happen.
“Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to,” said the official, adding that negotiators had been going “line-by-line” through the agreement. “And so when we say there is an agreement, the agreement comes on the very last day of the negotiation when you have a comprehensive package. That’s not where we are today.”
