The religious sect and the sunken South Korean ferry
As public anger grows in South Korea over the hundreds of deaths in the Sewol ferry disaster, SBS Dateline has gained rare access to investigate the ferry company’s mysterious owner.
NBC Dateline/August 12, 2014
By SBS Dateline
The official inquiry has already seen the resignation of three high profile figures including the Prime Minister and millions have signed a petition calling for a new independent investigation.
But it’s the disappearance and then mysterious death of the billionaire shipping owner Yoo Byung-eun that has added to the web of intrigue and unanswered questions behind the disaster.
“What all Koreans want is the truth,” Choi Kyung-deok tells Mary Ann Jolley from Dateline, in the report to be broadcast on SBS ONE tonight at 9.30pm.
His only child, 16-year-old Sungho, was among the more than 300 people killed when the boat capsized in April. Around 250 of them were teenagers on a school excursion to the island resort of Jeju.
“They were all beautiful, what a great loss, all of them,” he says in the emotional interview accompanied by his wife Eom So-young. “We’re saying don’t try to hide it, tell us the truth.”
It quickly became apparent that the ferry was dangerously unstable with a poorly trained crew and that the disorganised rescue operation could have saved many more lives.
But what has also become clear is the extent of ferry owner Yoo Byung-eun’s embezzlement of millions of dollars through his Evangelical Baptist Church, known as the Salvation Sect.
“He’s a very successful businessman, making lots of money. He distributed that money to the politicians,” says Professor Tark Ji-il, who’s an expert in Korean religious cults.
“I think that’s kind of the insurance to protect himself, to prepare for a case like the Sewol tragedy,” he tells Mary Ann.
When Yoo Byung-eun fled shortly after the disaster, 9,000 police were sent to look for him in the country’s biggest ever manhunt.
As that search continued, Mary Ann managed to get a rare invitation to see inside the sect’s compound and finds that their view of what happened is very different.
“I think the biggest possibility would be a submarine,” Salvation Sect spokesman Lee Tae-jong tells Mary Ann when she asks about the cause of the accident.
“When the ferry arrived nothing came up on the radar, which is why the object must have been underwater,” he says.
Mary Ann puts the theory to one of South Korea’s leading marine engineers, Professor Lee Sang-Yun, but he dismisses it as “complete nonsense”.
But before Yoo Byung-eun could be brought to justice, authorities announced that he was dead. His body had been found a month earlier in a plum orchard, but was so badly decomposed it had only just been identified.
Conspiracy theories are rife over whether it was murder or suicide, and whether it was an attempt to cover up corruption involving government officials. Some don’t believe it was even his body.
“I think they found a homeless man’s body and not Yoo Byung-eun’s,” says Lee Tae-jong from the Salvation Sect.
“While they were chasing Yoo Byung-eun, they arrested him elsewhere and he possibly died during the chase,” he tells Mary Ann. “I think that’s when they could have swapped the body.”
The captain of the Sewol and three of its crew are currently on trial charged with murder and the ferry company, Chonghaejin Marine, is now in receivership.
Meanwhile, the government is continuing to chase the Yoo family’s wealth, which is held in a labyrinth of companies and shareholdings and estimated to be worth around $240 million.
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