Posted on 04/27/2014 7:53:05 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
South Korea's Prime Minister, Chung Hong-won, offered to resign on Sunday following withering criticism of the government’s handling of a ferry disaster that has plunged a nation into mourning and claimed at least 188 lives.
The Sewol ferry was carrying 476 people, the majority schoolchildren, when it sank on April 16 while travelling to the tourist island of Jeju off the country’s southwest coast.
By Sunday the official death toll stood at 188 with at least 114 still missing.
Amid mounting criticism of the government’s response, Chung Hong-won, the Prime Minister, offered his resignation, apologising, “for many problems from the prevention of the accident to the early handling of the disaster”.
“I offer my apology for having been unable to prevent this accident from happening and unable to properly respond to it afterwards. I believed I, as the Prime Minister, certainly had to take responsibility and resign,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Well, we know the lyin’ king is a disaster but I didn’t know south Korea was taking any responsibility.
SK’s president had little to do with the ferry accident, but offers to step down because of dissatisfaction with government performance in the aftermath.
Can anyone imagine Obama stepping down due to government mistakes as a show of taking responsibility? Not me.
What a wimp PM.
Completely selfish to put this political turmoil on your nation because some private ferry service screw up royal.
Like what is this supposed to accomplish? Make you seem like you care the most about what happened?
He is taking responsibility because the buck stops with him. It’s called leadership.
Yes,I understand the concept.But here's where I'm coming from:I worked for 20 years at a world famous hospital.Walking down the halls of that hospital you'd just about trip over all the Nobel Prize winners and nominees.However,despite its fame and the skill of its staff,mistakes were made there.Some of these mistakes even cost patients their lives.It's hard for me,at least,to see the hospital's CEO resigning just because some brain surgeon sneezed during an operation and,as a result,accidentally severed a patent's spinal cord...or cerebellum.
I know that the case at hand is far different,but unless there's evidence that the PM gave officials on scene crazy instructions,or that they tried to call him and he was golfing and,thus,unavailable,or that he *knew* that the top official on scene was an unreliable alcoholic how can he be deemed morally responsible?
If American pols resigned after each disaster they created we’d have no one in Washington. Sounds right to me.
Too bad Obama doesn’t follow the Korean PM’s lead and offer to resign over the Obamacare disaster.
I understand, and I agree with you. This is politics, not medicine. Asian politics at that.
It was the pilot of the ship who gave the stand down order, so he bears full responsibility. I think he should be impeached.
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