Prosecutors in South Korea have filed charges of negligent manslaughter and ship burying against seven employees of a local shipowning company in connection with the sinking of a cargo vessel in the South Atlantic nearly five years prior.
The charges against the CEO and six other employees of local company Polaris Shipping were filed just weeks before the conclusion of the five-year period covering the statute of limitations for additional charges related to the loss of the ore carrier Stellar Daisy.
Originally built as a crude carrier in 1993, the Marshall Islands-flagged ore carrier split in two and sank some 2,000 nautical miles off Montevideo, Uruguay on March 31, 2017.
The ship was carrying around 260,000 tonnes of iron ore from Brazil to China when it was lost. Two of the crew were eventually rescued while the remaining 22 sailors, which include 14 Filipino and eight South Korean nationals, remain missing to this day.
In 2020, one year after Stellar Daisy's wreck was discovered on the seabed 1,800 nautical miles off Cape Town, South Africa, a South Korean court found Polaris CEO Kim Wang-jun and five other defendants guilty of violating the Ship Safety Act and of failing to report the vessel's structural defects to the country's Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (MOF).
Reporting of such defects to the MOF is required under South Korean law.
The defects became a matter of concern during the subsequent investigation after reports revealed that the crew sent out a radio message saying that the ship was taking on water and was listing heavily. Radio contact with the ship was lost soon afterwards.
The South Korean government filed the new charges against Mr Kim and six of his employees following continued requests by the family members of the 22 missing crewmen.
