(LEAD) Top court upholds 3-year sentence against coast guard official

(ATTN: UPDATES with details of court ruling; CHANGES headline)

SEOUL, Nov. 27 (Yonhap) -- The top court upheld a three-year sentence Friday against the former captain of a coast guard vessel in the latest ruling in a case stemming from a deadly ferry disaster last year.

The Supreme Court found Kim Kyoung-il, the former captain of the 100-ton vessel, guilty of professional negligence resulting in deaths of those aboard the sunken ferry Sewol.

Kim was accused of failing to properly command rescue crew members on April 16 last year when the 6,825-ton Sewol sank off the country's southwest coast.

The government was under public fire for its botched rescue attempts. The disaster, which left more than 300 people dead, mostly high school students on a field trip, is one of South Korea's worst peacetime disasters.

Also Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that vessel monitoring officials should not be criminally punished for their failure to properly monitor the ferry Sewol.

Upholding a lower court ruling, the Supreme Court acquitted the chief of the Vessel Traffic Service in Jindo Island, located near the site of the sinking, and 12 of his subordinates of negligence charges.

Prosecutors later found that it took as long as 18 minutes before the VTS center contacted the Sewol crew members, wasting time to save more people, because only one official was working on the night of the sinking, instead of two. The officials were supposed to have been working in pairs during a night shift.

The court, however, found all 13 officials, including the center chief, not guilty of the negligence charges, saying they did not have any intention not to perform their duties, though their actions could be taken for laziness.

"In principle, laziness is in the boundary of disciplinary action within the work place, not subject to criminal punishment," a court official said.

Except for the chief, the 12 officials were confirmed for monetary penalties over falsifying records of their working hours, pretending as if they had been working as a team of two.

Currently, a Chinese consortium led by China's state-run Shanghai Salvage is leading the 85.1 billion won (US$72 million) project to recover the ship.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court upheld a life sentence for the captain of the ferry for murdering the passengers aboard, after willfully neglecting his duty to help them evacuate.

scaaet@yna.co.kr
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