The tragedy involving the sunken ferry in South Korea is reported to have 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 uncover the regulatory failures that allowed passengers by the hundreds to set off on an unsafe ship.
It is reported that it may have been more overloaded than ever on its last journey.
One private, industry-connected entity recorded the weights, another set the weight limit and neither appears to have any idea what the other was up to or doing.
And they are but two parts of a maritime system that failed passengers on April 16th when the ferry sank, resulting in more than 300 people missing or dead.
The tragedy revealed immense safety gaps in South Korea’s monitoring of domestic passenger ships, which in a few ways is less rigorous than its rules for ships that can only handle cargo.
Together, the country’s regulators held more than enough information to conclude that the ferry was routinely overloaded, but it was of to no use as they did not share the date because they were not required to do so.
The Korean Register of Shipping checked the Sewol in early 2013 as it was being redesigned to carry more passengers.
The register cut 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 and only gave the report to the ship owner, Chonghaejin Marine Co. Ltd.
Both the coast guard and the Korean Shipping Association, which regulates and oversees departures and arrivals of domestic passenger ships appear to have known about the new limit before the tragedy.
“That’s a blind spot in the law,” said Lee Kyu-Yeul, professor emeritus at Seoul National University’s Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering.
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 refused to release it.
The redesigned ferry began operating in March 2013 and it has made nearly 200 round trips — 394 individual voyages — from Incheon port near Seoul to the southern island of Jeju.
According to the documents from the Incheon port, the Sewol exceeded the 987-ton limit on 246 voyages out of its 394 voyages.
However, the limit may have been surpassed more often than that. Only one zero cargo was recorded in the other 148 trips. Reporting the cargo to the port operator is not compulsory because it gathers information to compile statistics and is 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 show that 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.
The port operator has no record of the cargo from the Sewol’s last voyage.
Ferry operators hand in that information only after trips are done. Hence, the rules for domestic passenger ships are looser than those for cargo-only vessels, which must report cargo before they depart.
In paperwork filed before the Sewol’s last voyage, Captain Lee Joon-seok reported a much smaller final load than the one Moon described, according to a Coast Guard official who had access to the report but refused to provide a copy to the Associated Press.
The paperwork said the Sewol was loaded with 150 cars and 657 tons of cargo.
That would fall within the 987-ton limit, but it’s clearly inaccurate as the coast guard recovered 180 cars in the water.
An official with the Korea Shipping Association’s safety team said it is beyond the association’s capacity to verify whether a ship is carrying too much cargo.
“What we can do is to see the load line is not submerged,” he said.
The load line, a marking on the outside of a vessel, shows whether a ship is overloaded, but it does not show whether it has the sort of balance between cargo and ballast that the register report said was necessary.
“The only person on any vessel who knows the exact cargo safety limit, excluding ballast water, fuel, passengers and others, is the first mate,” the official said.
All 15 surviving crew members involved in the ferry’s navigation have been arrested, accused of negligence and failing to protect passengers.
Prosecutors also detained three employees of the ferry owner who handled cargo, and have raided the offices of the ship owner, the shipping association and the register. Heads of the shipping association and the register offered to resign in the wake of the disaster.
The cause of the sinking remains under investigation.
