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[HOT LINKS] South Korea’s Leader and Media Face Scrutiny Over Ferry Disaster

May 9, 2014

Family members holding the portraits of the victims of the sunken ferry Sewol, sit on the street near the presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 9, 2014. Family members marched to the presidential Blue House in Seoul early Friday calling for a meeting with President Park Geun-hye but ended up sitting on streets near the presidential palace after police officers blocked them. Park’s office said a senior presidential official plans to meet them later Friday. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

[THE NEW YORK TIMES] SEOUL, South Korea — Parents of high school students killed in the South Korean ferry disaster marched on the office of President Park Geun-hye in central Seoul on Friday, as prosecutors tightened their investigative noose around an enigmatic family that controls the operator of the doomed ferry.

Holding photos of their children, the parents said they came to ask for a meeting with Ms. Park to demand an inquiry into allegations that a tardy and bumbling response by her government drastically increased the number of deaths in the country’s worst disaster in decades.

They also demanded that the government dismiss a top news editor at KBS, South Korea’s largest public broadcasting company, where the government has at least an indirect influence in appointing its top management. Some local media quoted the editor as saying during a recent lunch with colleagues that the number of dead in the ferry tragedy was “not many, compared with the number of people killed in traffic accidents each year.” KBS denied that the editor made the comment.

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