A Seoul court sentenced a 72-year-old businessman to one year in jail Thursday for bribing a Navy official in connection with the construction of a salvage ship that failed to function at last year’s ferry disaster.
The chairman of a ship supplier, identified only by his surname Kim, was convicted of paying hundreds of millions of won (hundreds of thousands of dollars) to a now former Defense Acquisition Program Administration official, identified only as a 47-year-old surnamed Choi.
The Seoul Central District Court found that Kim had paid Choi to win a bid to supply a piece of equipment needed to build the country’s first indigenous salvage ship, the Tongyeong, in 2011.
The 3,500-ton Tongyeong was completed in 2012 but was found to be fraught with problems during the peak of efforts to rescue those missing from last year’s ferry disaster.
The ferry Sewol capsized off the southwest coast on April 16, killing more than 300 passengers, mostly teenagers.
Kim’s company had provided the parts used for raising submerged ships and other debris, court documents showed.
“The defendant hampered fair competition in the government’s process of selecting parts for the Tongyeong,” Judge Cho Yong-hyeon said in a ruling. “The part Kim supplied was a crucial piece of equipment, meaning the ramifications of his actions were significant.”
Judge Cho, however, said he considered the fact that the piece of equipment provided by Kim was not one of the faulty parts discovered last year.
“Thankfully, the piece of equipment he supplied didn’t have any defects, so I took that into account,” he said.
Last year, the military said the Tongyeong’s sonar system was dysfunctional and its remotely-operated vehicle unable to scale underwater structures during nationwide efforts to save the victims of the ferry sinking.
The announcement prompted a government investigation into allegations of bribery and other underhanded dealings between military officials and defense firms.
In late December, the vessel was delivered to the Navy after passing an operational capability test. (Yonhap)
