The Sewol ferry disaster killed 304 people in 2014, most of them high school students. The failures surrounding the sinking were so severe, and public trust so badly damaged, that conspiracy theories quickly filled the gaps.

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Sewol Disaster Conspiracies: What Happened After the Ship Went Down

The Sewol ferry disaster didn’t need conspiracy theories to make it horrifying. The facts managed that just fine.

On April 16, 2014, the Sewol capsized on its way to Jeju. Of the 476 people aboard, 304 died, most of them students from Danwon High School. The students were repeatedly told to stay where they were while the ship went down. The captain got off.

Millions of people watched the rescue fail on television. Families received contradictory information. Government agencies seemed incapable of coordinating with each other. Questions about what went wrong began almost immediately, and some of those questions eventually wandered into much stranger territory.

By 2022, when this episode was recorded, Sewol had accumulated years of investigations, court cases, political fallout, rumors and conspiracy theories. Some were attempts to explain genuine failures. Others required considerably more imagination.

So, Did North Korea Do It?

Of course North Korea appeared in the theories. This is South Korea. North Korea eventually gets blamed for almost everything short of a disappointing bowl of naengmyeon.

There was at least some context for the suspicion. Four years earlier, the South Korean naval ship Cheonan had sunk, and an international investigation concluded that it had been hit by a North Korean torpedo. Another large Korean vessel suddenly going down was inevitably going to produce comparisons.

The evidence didn’t cooperate. There was no indication of a torpedo or explosion, and fishing boats were operating nearby. The theory required a North Korean submarine to penetrate deep into South Korean waters, attack a passenger ferry without leaving the expected evidence, and then slip away unnoticed.

Other theories blamed the South Korean government. Perhaps Sewol had been deliberately sunk to manufacture a confrontation with North Korea. Maybe the company wanted insurance money. Another theory claimed the anchor had intentionally been dropped immediately before the ferry’s sharp turn.

None of that is necessary to explain why Sewol capsized. The ferry had been modified in ways that made it more top-heavy. It wasn’t carrying enough ballast water. Cargo and vehicles weren’t properly secured. When the ship turned, the load shifted.

No criminal mastermind was required. Greed and incompetence were already doing plenty of work.

Then It Got Weird

The theories became considerably stranger after the scandal surrounding President Park Geun-hye and Choi Soon-sil exploded.

Park’s relationship with the Choi family was genuinely bizarre. Choi Soon-sil’s father, Choi Tae-min, had been a religious figure with a long relationship with Park. Once that story became public, some people began connecting it to Sewol.

That’s where the human sacrifice theory came in.

Versions of the story claimed the Danwon High School students had somehow been deliberately sacrificed as part of a religious ritual. There wasn’t evidence supporting it, but the real events surrounding Park and the Choi family were strange enough to give the rumor somewhere to attach itself.

That’s one reason Sewol became such a magnet for conspiracies. The crew really did abandon passengers. Students really were told to remain below deck. The rescue really was a mess. Government information really was contradictory. Then the country’s president really did become embroiled in a completely separate scandal involving a strange religious figure and his daughter.

Feed all of that to the internet and restraint is unlikely.

The Rescue Is Where Things Get Harder

Not every suspicion surrounding Sewol was ridiculous. People were watching the ferry disappear beneath the water while hundreds of passengers remained inside. Families were receiving information that turned out to be wrong. Government agencies appeared unable to coordinate with each other.

Something had obviously failed.

That eventually developed into claims that rescuers had deliberately been prevented from saving passengers or that authorities had intentionally allowed people to die. The evidence for deliberate sabotage is much harder to establish than the evidence for institutional failure.

There is already plenty to criticize without adding a secret plan. Sewol showed what can happen when safety rules are ignored, institutions fail and responsibility becomes somebody else’s problem.

Meanwhile, some of the people who actually did something were ordinary fishermen.

The Fishermen and Divers

Local fishermen saw the ferry going down and took their boats toward it. They pulled survivors from the water. Some got close enough to see students trapped behind windows but couldn’t reach them.

Those images didn’t disappear when the fishermen went home.

Civilian divers also came from around the country. One discussed in the episode, Kim Sang-ho, drove from Seoul to Jindo after receiving a call asking for help. He remained there for weeks, repeatedly entering cold water and dangerous currents to search the wreck.

Many of these rescuers later reported nightmares, guilt and trauma. Some blamed themselves for not saving more people, even though they had voluntarily entered a disaster zone to help complete strangers.

They tend to appear in the Sewol story under the bland label “civilian rescuers.” What they actually did deserves a little more attention than that phrase usually gets.

What Happened to the Families

The parents wanted to know why their children died. They wanted to know why the rescue failed. They wanted to know why members of the crew escaped while their children were still being told to stay inside.

Some staged hunger strikes while demanding answers.

Counter-protesters responded by sitting nearby and eating in front of them.

The parents were accused of exploiting their children’s deaths. Their demands became entangled with Korean politics, and the families themselves became targets of political hostility.

One father quoted in the episode explained the demand much more simply. The families needed to know what happened because otherwise it could happen again.

Sending a child on a school trip and never getting them back tends to produce questions.

And Then Came the Ghosts

Reports also began circulating of young figures appearing along the coast around Jindo and Jeju. They would supposedly appear near the shoreline and then disappear.

Whether anyone actually encountered a ghost isn’t particularly important to understanding the stories. What is interesting is how easily Sewol fit into Korean ghost traditions that had existed long before the ferry sank.

Korean folklore is full of spirits created by violent, unfair or premature deaths. Hundreds of young people dying suddenly in cold water, far from home, with some families waiting a long time for their children’s bodies to be recovered fits comfortably into that tradition.

The mourning practices were even more revealing. Families brought food, drinks and warm clothing to the shore and called out to their children. The clothing carried an obvious meaning when their children had died in cold water.

At Danwon High School, families visited the desks their children had left behind. They cleaned them, brought flowers and left gifts.

Ghost folklore can seem like a collection of spooky stories until something happens that shows why those traditions existed in the first place.