South Korea – South Korean news agency Yonhap reports that the captain of the South Korean ferry that sank two days ago has been arrested.
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Yonhap says 68-year-old Lee Joon-seok was detained early Saturday.
The ship, the Sewol, sank Wednesday, leaving hundreds missing and feared dead.
The investigation into the disaster has focused on the ferry’s sharp turn before it started listing, and on whether a quicker evacuation order by the captain could have saved lives. Investigators also were determining whether the captain had abandoned the ship.
Rescuers are searching for about 270 people still missing and feared dead.
At least 28 bodies have been recovered. Officials said there were 179 survivors and about 270 people remain missing, many of them high school students.
Yonhap said two crewmembers were also arrested.
Unlike the USA, in some countries, including S. Korea, if you negligently kill passengers, as either a pilot of a commercial airliner, an engineer on a passenger train, or the driver of an intercity bus, you are held criminally responsible. Here, the most that happens is that such offenders usually lose their licenses. However, they are rarely, if every, criminally charged. I challenge anybody on this board to give me one specific example, of a commercial airline pilot who survived a fatal accident (where he was at fault), who was criminally charged.