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Quick answers
When did MV Sewol sink?
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.
How many people died?
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.
Who was convicted?
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.
What caused the capsize?
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.
Why did passengers stay inside?
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.
When was the ship raised?
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.
The story is a domestic ferry run that failed in daylight within reach of other boats.
Korean television made the list visible in real time. The legal story took eighteen months to reach the Supreme Court.
Beats
- A converted ferry
Sewol’s Japanese hull was rebuilt for more passengers and freight. Stability paperwork did not match the ship that sailed. Chonghaejin’s load practice on the Jeju route is part of the court record.
- Late departure, morning turn
The 15 April sailing left Incheon behind schedule. On 16 April a turn in the channel produced a list that grew instead of righting.
- Stay-put and abandonment
Internal announcements held passengers in cabins. Senior crew left. That contrast — not a graphic of the interior — is the ethical centre of the verdicts.
- Rescue that stopped at the hull
Nearby fishing boats and Coast Guard craft took people from the water and open decks. The intact-looking hull on television hid how few were still being brought out.
- From negligence to life
A 2014 trial called the captain’s crime negligence. The 2015 appeals court and Supreme Court called the same facts homicide by wilful negligence and locked the life sentence.
Sewol’s story is a stability failure plus a command failure, dated and tried, not an unsolved sea mystery.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.