Intention

The documentary takes up the Sewol ferry, which sank on 16 April 2014. The film examines the data from the ship’s automatic identification system and reconstructs its route step by step. The director’s case is this: parts of the officially released data are inconsistent, and information is missing at the point where the ship made a sharp turn. From there the film argues that the data was interfered with. It presents this as calculation rather than hypothesis. The claim was later examined officially; in August 2021 a special prosecutor announced that no evidence of tampering had been found and filed no indictment. So what the film puts forward was not confirmed by the prosecution. The account argues not about the disaster itself but about how the record was kept. Kim Ji-young’s hundred and ten minute South Korean documentary was completed in 2018.