Diver Kim Gwan-hong testifies about the ordeal he has suffered since working as a diver for the Sewol ferry at the first hearing of the Sewol Special Investigative Commission
Kim Gwan-hong’s voice took on an indignant tone as he testified as a witness in a parliamentary audit of the Ministry of Public Safety and Security last September by the National Assembly Security and Public Administration Committee. Then 42, he was a civilian diver who had gone to the scene at Jindo on Apr. 23, 2014, a week after the Sewol ferry sinking. “It wasn’t somewhere I went to make money. My ‘crime’ was going there as a matter of conscience. If there’s a disaster, don’t call the public. The government needs to figure this stuff out on its own [in the future],” Kim said. “The victims were tangled together in their utter terror, and I prayed for and cradled each one of them as I brought them,” he raged after braving the pitch black conditions in the 48-meter ocean depths.Early in the morning of June 17, Kim was found dead in the greenhouse where he lived in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, three days before he turned 43 years old.No specific cause of death has yet been reported. But closed circuit camera footage showed him returning home around 2 am that night and drinking on his own before collapsing an hour later. The images, along with the discovery at the scene of a fallen pill bottle and final text messages to acquaintances with messages such as “I’m sorry” and “I’ll see you in a better place in a next life,” lead to the seemingly inescapable conclusion that he took his own life. No signs of trespassing were found.
