▲ Marine Corps Underwater Search Photo: Yonhap News On the 19th, while the late Corporal Chae Su-geun was swept away by a torrent during a search for a missing person in Yecheon-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, suspicions were raised that the Marine Corps actually encouraged a naked search in the rapids by offering corporal Chae and company members a reward vacation of 14 nights and 15 days.
According to Yonhap News, until the day before the accident, Corporal Chae and his colleagues did a visual search on foot on the riverside and did not even dip their feet in the water.
On the day of the accident, the Marine Corps put 388 people in Seokgwancheon to search for missing people.
The Bomun Bridge area where the accident occurred is one of the 11km sections between Ganbang Bridge and Gopyeong Bridge.
The Marines who found the missing person were to be given a reward holiday of 14 nights and 15 days.
Reward holidays were a great motivation for soldiers.
A unit official said that it was a psychological comfort to the young man who saw the body and an encouragement to sufficiently achieve the operational goal.
An official from the unit said, “There were no soldiers who didn’t know that the water could fill up to chest level.”
However, it is known that several organizations that participated in the search expressed their concerns after seeing the artillery battalion, which was not a rescue or search expert, go into the water unreasonably.
In a statement on the day of the accident, the Military Human Rights Center said, “In a disaster situation, military service members can be put into public support work. However, it is dangerous to entrust an ordinary soldier with no experience with the task of directly entering the river and searching for the missing person, not the task of recovering from flood damage or assisting in the search for missing people.”
An official from the search authorities also said, “Unlike police or firefighters, who recognize and act on their own, soldiers act according to orders, so it is difficult to act promptly in an emergency situation, so it is common to see that they should not be deeply involved in underwater searches.”
In this regard, the spokesperson for the National Fire Agency said, “(The Marine Corps) was told to search outside the water on foot. We only discussed the search area on foot, but we never agreed to go into the water without a life jacket or safety device.”
Some claim that the Marine Corps requested that the search area be placed in a place where it is estimated that there are many missing people in order to increase the performance of the missing search.
Regarding these allegations, Lee Ki-won, head of the public relations department of the Marine Corps 1st Division, said, “It is a one-sided claim.”
Copyright@ KWANGJU BROADCASTING COMPANY. all rights reserved.
2023-07-22 23:25:12
#Marine #Corps #Encourage #Unreasonable #Searches
