A passenger ferry crashed into a rocky islet off the coast of South Korea on Wednesday because the man behind the wheel was looking at his cellphone and missed a turn, the local coast guard said.
All 267 passengers and crew members on board were safely evacuated, said Chae Su-jun, chief of the coast guard in Mokpo, a city near the island in the country’s southwest.
News of the crash shocked people in South Korea, where 250 schoolchildren heading to Jeju Island on a school trip drowned when an overloaded ferry capsized in 2014. The national tragedy raised questions about why such a wealthy country was plagued by so many human-caused disasters.
The ferry that crashed on Wednesday night, the Queen Jenuvia II, hit the islet at around 8:15 p.m. while making a roughly four-and-a-half journey from Jeju to Mokpo in the Yellow Sea, Mr. Chae said at a news conference. About 27 passengers suffered from minor injuries or dizziness, he said.
Kim Hwang-gyun, the chief investigator of the Mokpo Coast Guard, said on Thursday that it had detained the ferry’s first mate, who was in charge of the ship when it crashed, and its helmsman.
The ship was last sailing at about 26 miles per hour and crashed less than an hour before its scheduled arrival, according to the coast guard and the vessel-tracking site VesselFinder. Passengers described hearing a violent bang and fearing for their lives as the ferry ran aground.
Mr. Kim said the coast guard had charged the two officers and the ferry’s captain with injury by gross negligence, a crime that carries a maximum prison term of five years upon conviction. The coast guard did not identify them, saying only that the captain is in his 60s and the other two officers are in their 40s.
The first mate, who was in charge of the ferry because the captain was off duty, told investigators that he had been checking the news on his cellphone at a time when he should have been turning the ship away from the islet, Mr. Kim told reporters.
By the time the ferry approached the rock, it was about two to three minutes too late to avoid it, the coast guard said. The vessel was on autopilot in the area of the accident, even though ships normally steer manually there because the sea channel is narrow, Mr. Kim said.
The first mate had initially told investigators that the rudder was not working properly, prompting a probe into possible defects in the ferry, but he later changed his statement to acknowledge that he had been looking at his phone, Mr. Kim said.
Mr. Kim said that the coast guard had charged the captain, who was not in the ferry’s wheelhouse at the time of the accident, on the suspicion that he failed to fulfill his duties on the ship.
Investigators were questioning the helmsman, who is Indonesian, through a translator, Mr. Kim said. They were also examining the crew members’ cellphones and the ferry’s data recorders and security camera footage.
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
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