A local activist group lodged a lawsuit Wednesday with a Seoul administrative court demanding two branches of the presidential office disclose information about their initial response to April’s deadly ferry disaster.
The 6,825-ton ferry Sewol capsized off the southwest coast on April 16, killing more than 300 people, most of them high school students on a school trip. The government’s poor initial response has been cited as a key factor contributing to the high death toll.
People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) said it took the legal action as the offices of the national security adviser and the presidential chief of staff have so far refused to make public their reports to President Park Geun-hye and their countermeasures on the day of the ferry accident.
In early October, the group made a formal request to the offices, but they rejected it, citing risks of jeopardizing national security and violating Park’s privacy.
“South Korean law obliges Cheong Wa Dae to disclose presidential documents to the public,” PSPD claimed.
Even if Cheong Wa Dae declines people’s requests for information disclosure, it should give a clear reason why, the group argued, adding the presidential office has simply maintained that the documents are “classified.”
“Cheong Wa Dae should transparently disclose what it reported to Park and what it did to dissipate unnecessary controversy over Park’s whereabouts on the day of the tragedy,” PSPD said.
In early August, the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun reported that Park had met with a man in the hours following the ferry accident.
Dismissing the report as groundless, the presidential office has sued Tatsuya Kato, the former head of the newspaper’s Seoul bureau who wrote the story, for libel. (Yonhap)
