South Korea ferry was routinely overloaded

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By YOUKYUNG LEE

INCHEON, South Korea (AP) — The doomed ferry Sewol exceeded its cargo limit on 246 trips — nearly every voyage it made in which it reported cargo — in the 13 months before it sank, according to documents that reveal the regulatory failures that allowed passengers by the hundreds to set off on an unsafe vessel. And it may have been more overloaded than ever on its final journey.

One private, industry-connected entity recorded the weights. Another set the weight limit. Neither appears to have had any idea what the other was doing. And they are but two parts of a maritime system that failed passengers April 16 when the ferry sank, leaving more than 300 people missing or dead.

The disaster has exposed enormous safety gaps in South Korea's monitoring of domestic passenger ships, which is in some ways less rigorous than its rules for ships that handle only cargo. Collectively, the country's regulators held more than enough information to conclude that the Sewol was routinely overloaded, but because they did not share that data and were not required to do so, it was practically useless.

The Korean Register of Shipping examined the Sewol early last year as it was being redesigned to handle more passengers. The register slashed the ship's cargo capacity by more than half, to 987 tons, and said the vessel needed to carry more than 2,000 tons of water to stay balanced.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140504/skorea-ship-danger_ignored-a936bce7e4.html

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FILE - In this April 16, 2014 file photo, South Korean coast guard officers try to rescue passengers from the Sewol ferry as it sinks in the water off the southern coast near Jindo, south of Seoul, South Korea. The doomed ferry Sewol exceeded its cargo limit on 246 trips - nearly every voyage it made in which it reported cargo - in the 13 months before it sank, according to documents that reveal the regulatory failures that allowed passengers by the hundreds to set off on an unsafe vessel. And it may have been more overloaded than ever on its final journey. (AP Photo/Yonhap, File) KOREA OUT

[Skittles]

1. lack of regulations is a conservative paradise

[davidpdx]

2. Yep

That's what happens when two consecutive conservative administrations are elected. Lee Myung-bak was elected in 2007 and took office in 2008 and Park Geun-hye (daughter of dictator Park Chung-hee) was elected in 2012 and sworn in in 2013 (she will be in office until 2018).

The liberals keep screwing themselves here in presidential elections. The last liberal president was Noh Moo hyun and he was a bit of an ass.

The National Assembly elections here are on June 4th (kind of like our mid-term election) and it will be interesting to see what happens. I get to vote for everything but National Assembly and president. I'm hoping a strong liberal coalition wins and the administration has to really answer as to why there was such lax regulations.

[davidpdx]

3. Here is a bit more

This is certainly something that needs to be looked at carefully:

The Korean Register of Shipping examined the Sewol early last year as it was being redesigned to handle more passengers. The register slashed the ship's cargo capacity by more than half, to 987 tons, and said the vessel needed to carry more than 2,000 tons of water to stay balanced.

But the register gave its report only to the ship owner, Chonghaejin Marine Co. Ltd. Neither the coast guard nor the Korean Shipping Association, which regulates and oversees departures and arrivals of domestic passenger ships, appear to have had any knowledge of the new limit before the disaster.

snip

Chonghaejin reported much greater cargo capacity to the shipping association: 3,963 tons, according to a coast guard official in Incheon who had access to the documentation but declined to release it.

Since the redesigned ferry began operating in March 2013, it made nearly 200 round trips — 394 individual voyages — from Incheon port near Seoul to the southern island of Jeju. On 246 of those voyages, the Sewol exceeded the 987-ton limit, according to documents from Incheon port.

The limit may have been exceeded even more frequently than that. In all but one of the other 148 trips, zero cargo was recorded. It is not mandatory for passenger ferries to report cargo to the port operator, which gathers the information to compile statistics and not for safety purposes.

More than 2,000 tons of cargo was reported on 136 of the Sewol's trips, and it topped 3,000 tons 12 times. But the records indicate it never carried as much as it did on its final disastrous voyage: Moon Ki-han, a vice president at Union Transport Co, the company that loaded the ship, has said it was carrying an estimated 3,608 tons of cargo.

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It sounds like both the ship's crew, the company, and the lack of regulation was the cause for the sinking of the ship.

On a side note: Monday and Tuesday are both holidays here in South Korea. Monday is Children's Day and Tuesday is Buddha's Birthday. Neither one is going to be widely celebrated and it look like people will pretty much stay home. It's unusual to have the two holidays back to back.