Police investigating the Jeju Air passenger plane disaster at Muan International Airport on Dec. 29, 2024, sent seven officials from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) to prosecutors on charges including systematically covering up problems with the "localizer (azimuth equipment)."
But the disaster victims' families said it was a typical "cutting off the tail" investigation that excluded the minister and the Vice Minister, and urged that the truth be uncovered and those responsible be punished.
The Dec. 29 Muan Airport Jeju Air passenger plane disaster victims' families association stated accordingly in a statement on the 26th. The families association argued, "We must now break, without fail, the cowardly orthodoxy of the judicial and administrative system that if you conceal the truth and push it back, you can reduce responsibility as time passes."
The special investigation team on the Dec. 29 passenger plane disaster of the National Office of Investigation (NOI) under the Korean National Police Agency announced interim findings that all seven Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) officials booked on charges including falsifying official documents had been referred to prosecutors that day. They include four who drafted and reviewed press reference materials related to the localizer and three overall supervisors.
They are accused of distributing, twice on Dec. 30 and 31, 2024, press reference materials titled "The localizer at Muan Airport was installed in accordance with relevant regulations" in an attempt to evade responsibility, even though the localizer had been installed in violation of those regulations.
The families association said, "In those urgent and harrowing hours when even staying up all night would not have been enough to recover the remains and resolve the disaster, officials at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) were sitting at desks, putting their heads together to forge false official documents," adding, "They were preoccupied with plotting to cover up their own responsibility and to blind the public and the families, while putting the recovery of the remains on the back burner."
The families association criticized that due to a botched response, remains and personal effects were left at the crash site, and re-recovery work is still underway. It then assessed that the current investigation results are only "the prologue."
The families association demanded: ▲ identify and punish those who ordered the falsification of official documents and the abandonment of remains from Dec. 29, 2024, to the end of the search on Jan. 15, 2025 ▲ transparently disclose the full picture of the stockpiling of remains, the botched response, and all cover-up operations ▲ determine the root cause of the disaster and accelerate investigations and punishments for all responsible.
The families association said, "We will not give up and will not retreat a single step until the full picture of the concealed botched response is fully revealed and every person responsible for concealing the truth faces the stern judgment of the law."