Sewol evidence: AIS, cargo and the hull

The ferry listed and capsized on the morning of 16 April 2014 in the Yellow Sea near Jindo, on the Incheon–Jeju route. It had left Incheon the previous night.

Korean official accounting used in the trials is 304 dead or missing out of 476 aboard, with 172 rescued. About 250 of the dead were Danwon High School students. Early search tallies of recovered bodies and still-missing persons shifted by single digits as the salvage continued.

Captain Lee Joon-seok received a life sentence, upheld by the Supreme Court on 12 November 2015, for homicide by wilful negligence and related counts. Other crew received terms from about 18 months to 12 years on the final appeal path. Some Coast Guard and regulatory officials were separately convicted or dismissed.

Courts and investigation bodies pointed to a combination of a sharp turn, excess and poorly secured cargo, reduced stability after rebuilding, and insufficient ballast — not a wartime act and not a single unexplained hole.

Repeated announcements told them to wait. The captain did not issue a timely abandon-ship order. The Supreme Court treated that omission, plus the crew’s departure, as the core of the homicide-by-wilful-negligence finding.

The hull was brought up on 23 March 2017 and later moved for examination and memorial use. Salvage was meant to recover remaining missing people and to preserve the ship as evidence.