One more sailor of the sunken ferry Sewol was put under arrest Tuesday, bringing to five the total number of the ill-fated vessel's staffers charged with not fulfilling their duty to safely evacuate passengers, officials said.
A joint investigation team of police and prosecutors alleged that a 58-year-old first mate surnamed Sohn, who attempted to kill himself a day earlier amid the ongoing investigation, had neglected his duty.
The arrest came after the arrests on Monday of four other crew members -- two first mates, including one surnamed Kang, one second mate and a chief engineer -- on charges of negligence of duty and breaking the standards of the Rescue and Aid at Sea and in the River Act, officers said.
The ship's 69-year-old captain, Lee Jun-seok, and two other crew members were detained pending trial last week on suspicion of negligence of duty and violation of maritime law.
"Sohn has undergone questioning by police since his suicide attempt," said an investigator on the team. "The team judges that the charges against Sohn are enough, just like the other crew members put under arrest."
A court hearing opened earlier in the day at the Mokpo branch of the Gwangju District Court in the southwestern coastal city of Mokpo to decide whether to issue warrants for the four. A decision is expected Tuesday night, a court official said.
The 6,825-ton ferry Sewol capsized and sank off the southwestern island of Jindo on Wednesday on its way to the resort island of Jeju. A total of 476 passengers were aboard, with 108 of them confirmed dead and 194 others still unaccounted for.
The investigation team alleged that Kang was the crew member who made radio communication with the vessel traffic service (VTS) and asked whether passengers would be rescued if they abandoned ship off South Korea's southern coast.
According to a transcript of their communication released earlier, the Jindo VTS had ordered the ferry to take emergency steps to evacuate passengers, but the crew took no such measures during the communication.
Meanwhile, prosecutors said Tuesday that they have begun tracing the assets of the family that owns Cheonghaejin Marine Co., the operator of the ill-fated Sewol, as part of their corruption investigation into the ferry disaster.
The Incheon District Prosecutors' Office in Incheon, a port city west of Seoul, said it is looking into assets, both at home and abroad, of Yoo Byung-eun, a former chief of Semo Marine Co., and his two sons.
Cheonghaejin Marine is a virtual successor of Semo Marine, which went bankrupt in 1997 after it was hit by a series of scandals, including the sinking of one of its cruise ships.
Cheonghaejin was created in 1999 by taking over ships and assets held by Semo Marine's affiliate, and Yoo's two sons control Cheonghaejin through a complicated ownership structure.
Yoo's two sons each hold a 19.44 percent stake in I-One-I Holdings, which has 13 unlisted firms under its umbrella, with total assets worth 560 billion won (US$539 million).
Yoo and his family members are estimated to own at least 240 billion won in assets such as stocks and properties.