Captain Lee, owner Yoo, President Park, the Coast Guard leadership, the prime minister and the Ansan school community.
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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.
Korean courts named the crew. Korean politics named the president’s hours. Families named the school.
English profiles often stopped at the captain’s photograph. The file is wider.
Captain of MV Sewol
Left the ship without a timely evacuation order. Sentenced to life in 2015 for homicide by wilful negligence after a 2014 negligence-only trial. The Supreme Court held that abandoning command made survival from inside the hull effectively impossible.
Chonghaejin owner figure
Sought as the face of the operating group. Found dead in June 2014; identification followed in July. Corporate and family-network cases continued without a living principal owner in the dock.
President of South Korea
Her delayed public appearance on 16 April became the “seven hours” controversy. It did not cause the list, but it became part of the later impeachment atmosphere in 2016–17.
Korea Coast Guard commissioner
Dismissed as the rescue command was judged too slow to enter the hull. The Coast Guard as an institution was later broken up and rebuilt — a structural aftershock of the first hours.
Prime minister
Offered resignation in May 2014 as the political price of the disaster. English wires treated the offer as a ritual of responsibility; Korean debate asked whether any minister could answer for cargo rules.
Ansan passengers and bereaved
A single school trip supplied most of the dead. Families drove the Special Act, the yellow-ribbon memorial language and the demand to raise the hull. This page names the community, not individual minors.
The convicted names are adult crew and some officials. The memorial names are mostly a school roll, held by families and the city of Ansan.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.