Intention

Film content

In Director Ji-young Kim's documentary, he seeks to reveal the truth about the sinking of the Sewol, an incident that has not been resolved as of 2024. He identifies the failures of the South Korean administration run by Park Geun-hye and the influence of the National Intelligence Service as being critical components in the disaster. Kim examines the corruption and cover-up of the Sewol Ferry sinking, as well as the suffering of the victims' families in the aftermath. The film is divided up into chapters that address the various aspects of his investigation.

Chapter 1: The Evidence Of An Accident: Is It Genuine?

Since most of the available coverage at the time of the Sewol's sinking focused on the Coast Guard's failed rescue, Director Kim's team gathered the information given out by the government's Police-Prosecution Joint Investigation Team. The government's case is laid out in this first chapter. The prosecutor's office indicated that the accident occurred because of a sharp right turn and the listing of the ferry's cargo. Old, faulty equipment, poorly secured cargo, a company (Chonghaejin) that focused on profit over safety, and a badly trained captain and crew were blamed for the accident.

However, when Director Kim began to delve into the government-released Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, he found that it was suspicious. Ou-Joon Kim, a journalist with a popular news podcast in South Korea, noted that the AIS tracking chart for the Sewol was missing important data. Channel A, an unrelated news agency, reported that the AIS signals for Sewol were missing from the early morning hours of April 16 (about 3:46 am). The news outlet released this information to the public on April 16, the night of the sinking. However, the following day, the government released the supposedly missing data. The missing data was said to have been taken from a local station, the Mokpo VTS center.

However, when the documentary team examined the government-released data, they found that there was still missing information at the point where the Sewol made a sharp turn. Journalist Ou-Joon Kim (Journalist Kim) asked if this tampering with the AIS tracking information was an attempt to conceal the ship's path.

Part of the CNN Interview with Ye-Shik Moon, the Captain of the Doola Ace, is shown. Paula Hancocks, a CNN reporter, interviewed Captain Moon shortly after the accident. During the interview, Moon notes that the Sewol made a slow, sharp turn and its AIS system was turned off. However, despite the fact that Moon noted the AIS tracking system was off, and therefore, not sending any data to be recorded at a VTS center, the government did release additional data after the CNN report. The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries(MOF) also indicated the Sewol's AIS data had been saved at the Mokpo VTS station. This was suspicious, since the Sewol's AIS system was off: the Mokpo station could not have the data because none had been sent from the Sewol.

Chapter 2: The Truth Uncovered by the Special Investigation Commission

In Seoul, there were massive protests over the Sewol incident. The Special Investigation Commission (SIC) to investigate the Sewol Ferry accident was launched by the government, but it had no legal power to either investigate the disaster or prosecute those found guilty of it. In September 2015, the investigation began.

The SIC examined the joint investigation team of the police and prosecutor's office and the crew. The issue was when the accident actually occurred (around 8:49 or 8:50?).

The film includes the recorded statement of Sewol's Chief Engineer, Ki-Ho Park, who said the ship had listed prior to entering the Maenggol Channel. A group of survivors talked about an incident that occurred at around 8:30 am, which did not match the government's timeline of the accident. Sewol's Oiler Young-Jae Lee's recorded statement indicates that when he was in the engine control room, the ship was shaking and a small refrigerator tipped over sometime between 8:25 and 8:30 am. However, in the follow-up interviews with the prosecution team, the time was definitely changed to 8:50 am.

First Mate/Engineer Ji-Tae Sohn sent text messages to his wife indicating that he had been "interrogated all night" and was going to be interviewed again by the National Intelligence Service (NIS). He made a suicide attempt the following day. Sohn initially said that at a little after 8:26 am, he heard a loud noise and went out to see what was happening. The engines had stopped and the ship was listing 15 degrees. The crew that was on duty came up to meet him as he went down to the engine room.

All of the government reports say the time was 8:50 am.

In April 2016, then-president Geun-Hye Park said that continuing the Sewol investigation was too expensive. In September 2016, the SIC was dissolved.

Chapter 3: The Key to the Mystery

In January 2015, work began again on the documentary. People donated to pay for the film's expenses, and the victims' families lent their support by giving Director Kim's investigation team access to critical materials.

The raw AIS data for the Sewol's track was written in ASCII. The MOF only sent the navigation data to the government. The new data points formed the rest of the Sewol's track, and this information was what many analysts used to interpret what happened to the Sewol. However, Director Kim used the raw data in ASCII format. He found irregularities in this information.

He explained that there are two kinds of data: the first group starts with a number 1 and the second group starts with a number 3. Kim found that prior to entering the Maenggol Channel, the data for the AIS began with a 1. But then the data beginning with a 3 appeared whenever the ship made a sudden turn; this matched with the radar track chart submitted by the Navy.

A control device engineer, Seong-bok Choi, confirmed what Director Kim and his team guessed, which was that the normal motion of the vessel generated a normal message starting with 1. A special message was generated every time the ship made the sudden movement, yielding AIS data points starting with a number 3. Kim referred to this data that begins with a 3 as a "special message".

The team determined that the data preceded by a number 3 could either be from an abrupt turn of the ship or from a "radical speed change." The Sewol had a lower speed limit of 14 knots and an upper speed limit of 23 knots. Anything outside of this range was considered abnormal for the ship. (Whenever the ship went straight and was within the normal speed range, the data started with 1.) When the Sewol's speed either went at or below 14 knots or at or above 23 knots, the AIS transponder generated a special message starting with a 3.

Choi provides Kim and his team with a document from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU; Technical Characteristics for an Automatic Identification System Using Time Division Multiple Access in the VHF Maritime Mobile Frequency Band, M Series, Mobile, radiodetermination, amateur and related satellite services; Recommendation ITU-R M.1371-5; 2/2014; 37:13). The document assisted with their interpretation of the AIS data.

Chapter 4: From Incheon to the Last Island

Troubling AIS data appeared shortly after the Sewol turned out of the port at Incheon. At around 1:50 am on the 16th, a special message in the AIS data was triggered in the waters off of Gunsan when the speed of the Sewol shot above 23 knots, indicating that the crew must have increased the engine power if the tide was not responsible for the gain, and another sharp turn message appears in the data. Hee-Geun Seo, one of the survivors of the sinking, noticed the sudden list to the left before the ship righted itself. The MOF data submitted to the National Assembly showed the data for 1:50 am, but left out about 30% of the original data in its decoding. By excluding this data, the government's analysis covered up the fact that the AIS information was being sent at a rate of 30 times a minute, which would have shown that the Sewol's speed at this time was over 23 knots and out of its normal operation range. The MOF data showed that the speed of the ship was only 17 knots.

At around 4:00 am on April 16, the government's AIS servers in Daejeon (far inland) stopped recording all AIS data. At 4:11, however, the speed of the Sewol was reported as below 14 knots. At 5:00 am, the speed reportedly increased and then slowed again at around 5:50 am. The pattern repeated itself, and so the report rate for the AIS data followed this pattern. At 7:00 am, Sewol entered the Dadohae area near Uido, and a series of special messages occurred for the next 30 minutes (54 messages).

Only 75 students from Danwon High School were rescued. During a mass interview, the children shout out that the ship's movements in the morning were "violent" at around 7:00 am. They call out that between 7 and 7:30 am, there was a violent list of the ship. This was assumed to be the time when Sewol passed between two islands, Uido and Maemuldo.

The video footage from the Sewol was salvaged almost two months after the sinking, so there is little footage available that can prove the speed of the ferry. The Sewol's CCTV Digital Video Recorder (DVR) was recovered. There is no data from the 7-7:30 am time slot, or data from before that time. The Sewol's CCTV may have been turned off.

In the third SIC hearing, the CEO of the CCTV DVR Company, Hyeon-Cheol Shin, is told by an SIC member that if the screen was on, then the recording device must have also been on and saving the data. The CEO confirmed this as a fact.

Chapter 5: The Last Puzzle

Director Kim and his team visited Jukdo Island in the Maenggol Channel to examine where the Sewol sank. This island was passed by the Sewol at about 8:30 am. They followed the Navy's track chart for the Sewol and sailed out towards Byeongpung Island. It was at this point that Director Kim realized that Captain Moon from the Doola Ace was in the best position to talk about the Sewol, since he was there when the ferry ran into trouble. Moon's nautical chart is shown with some positions marked on it and revealed a serious discrepancy in the government's data and the facts: the positions marked by Moon show that the ship was actually 750 meters closer to Byeongpung Island than that reported by the MOF and 500 meters closer than the Navy radar data.

During the radio communication recorded at 9:47 am on April 16, Captain Moon gave the coordinates of the Sewol. However, the Mokpo Coast Guard sent different coordinates of the Sewol to the Jeju Coast Guard via text. Director Kim investigated the control data from the Jindo VTS, which was available from the Archives of the Truth Committee and Salvage Committee of the 4/16 Sewol Families. The sinking point given by the Jindo VTS is also different from Captain Moon's data. The team then discovered that there were discrepancies in other parts of the government's track data, and that the final resting place of the Sewol matches Captain Moon's coordinates, not the government's. Director Kim concluded that all of the government data had been shifted 750 meters from the real coordinates given by the eyewitness, Captain Moon.

In an interview with Captain Moon of the Doola Ace, Moon noted that there were only about 4 nm (nautical miles) between the Sewol and the Doola Ace at the time of the accident (around 7.4 km). The government data, however, indicated that the Doola Ace was 11 km away. Moon indicated he was concerned about Sewol because there was a risk of collision. Survivors' testimonies about what they saw around the time of the accident confirm that the Doola Ace was spotted from the Sewol, which would have been impossible if the government's data was accurate. This information confirmed that the government-released AIS data had been faked.

It would have taken about ten minutes for the Sewol to drift 750 meters. This movement would mean that the Doola Ace would have met the Sewol 10 minutes earlier than indicated by the government data. The actual location of the Sewol's hard turn would therefore not be able to be identified. Director Kim moved the track data down to match the coordinates Captain Moon gave, and found that the unusual listing of the ship tracked with the underwater mountainous region near the island. At 8:30 am, the ship experienced an issue that was related to the seabed configuration. The seabed rise is not high enough to have struck the Sewol, but the Sewol's anchor could have been let down from the ferry itself.

Chapter 6: That Day, We Witnessed the Truth

Korean cars and trucks typically have cameras in them. This footage was used to identify the timing of the list of the ferry. Using multiple cameras and viewpoints, Kim and his team showed that the ferry tilted 45 degrees before the vehicles on board started to slide. The evidence showed that the tilt was not caused by the vehicles tilting to one side, as indicated by the government's narrative. Calculations showed that if the cargo did shift in the way described by the government, it would have taken a long time for the ship to list in the way it did.

A simulation is run showing the government's explanation of how the Sewol sank. Next, the simulation from the SIC, using the actual footage and data from the ship, is shown. The ship goes from 18 degrees to 35 degrees, taking more than 30 seconds to go from 18 degrees to 35 degrees. The listing of the ship in the government's narrative would have been slow, but the video footage shows that the actual rate was rapid: 27 degrees of tilt per second. The fast tilting of the ship pointed to an external force being applied in some fashion.

The containers on the bow of the Sewol were secured with special lashing devices that can hold up to 36 tons. In the simulation of the government's theory, the containers would have turned counter clockwise as they rolled off the ship. But if the anchor pulled down the ferry, then the containers on the port side bow would have slid forward quickly, with a clockwise turn. Photos of the accident show the containers are jammed together at the front by the yellow dividing strip and they have bent surfaces, indicating they rammed into each other.

The physicist explains this motion using a bus analogy: if you are on a bus and it suddenly slows, you will rush to the front of the bus (inertia). He notes that the starboard side containers were not moved forward as much because the speed was not as reduced on the starboard side of the Sewol.

In the external force scenario, the passengers on the starboard side of the ship would have flown forward. Evidence from survivors' testimonies indicate this is what occurred.

Final report

The physical evidence points to an anchor on the Sewol being dropped while the ship was in motion. The faked data and inaccurate information disseminated in the media and government point to corruption and collusion at the highest levels of government. It was discovered that the NIS had some involvement with the Sewol prior to its sinking. The documentary ends with video footage recovered from one of the Danwon High School student's phones, showing her and her friends having fun. None of the girls survived the sinking.