South Korea's prime minister has resigned over the government's handling of the ferry sinking that left more than 300 people dead or missing.
Chung Hong-won's resignation comes amid rising indignation over claims by the victims' relatives that the government did not do enough to rescue or protect their loved ones. Most of the dead and missing were high-school students on a school trip.
A spokesman said President Park Geun-hye would accept the resignation, but did not say when Mr Chung would leave office.
Officials have taken into custody all 15 people involved in navigating the ferry Sewol, which sank on April 16. A prosecutor revealed investigators were also looking into communications made, as the ship sank, between a crew member and the company that owns the ferry.
Mr Chung was heckled by victims' relatives and his car was blocked at a shelter on an island near the site of the sinking.
He gave his reasoning for the resignation to reporters in Seoul yesterday.
"As I saw grieving families suffering with the pain of losing their loved ones and the sadness and resentment of the public, I thought I should take all responsibility as prime minister," Mr Chung said.
"There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again."
Two helmsmen and two members of the crew detained on Saturday have been formally arrested. Eleven other crew members, including the captain, were arrested earlier. The crew members are accused of negligence and failing to help passengers in need.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article