South Korean prosecutors in the case of Capt. Lee Joon-seok are seeking the death penalty after 294 people were killed when the Sewol capsized off South Korea's southwestern coast on Apr. 16. An additional 10 bodies have yet to be found.

A sum total of 476 people were aboard the Sewol, and only 172 of the victims were rescued. The prosecution told the court Joon-seok should be sentenced to death for failing to carry out his duty. While several defendants have been sentenced to death in South Korea in the last decade, there have been no executions since December 1997.

Lee, 68, who is on trial at the Gwangju District Court for murder alongside three others, is among 15 crew members accused of abandoning the foundered ship after telling the passengers to stay put in their cabins. Most of the victims in the tragedy were schoolchildren from the same high school. He said he did not intend to kill any of the passengers aboard the Sewol.

Prosecutors at the trial proceedings also sought life sentences for three other crewmembers -- a first mate, a second mate and the chief engineer -- charged with homicide, while sentencing the other 11 members to prison terms varying from 15 to 30 years. In addition, an unnamed female crewmember, who was at the helm of the ship at the time, faces 30 years in prison.

The incident has caused widespread outrage over the rescue fiasco in which crewmembers believed the Coast Guard's duty was to evacuate the passengers on board. There were also various negligent safety standards, such as failing to broadcast an evacuation plan to passengers as the ship plunged, improper storage and the overloading of cargo, as well as allegedly refusing to use the ferry's facilities, such as life rafts and life vests.

Found video footage of their escape triggered indignation and severe criticism of the rescue operation conducted by the President Park Geun-hye government.

More scandal followed after survivors testified that crewmembers told passengers to stay put several times over the loudspeaker. Shortly after his arrest, Lee initially told the press he withheld the evacuation order because rescuers had yet arrived and feared passengers safely in the rapid, stone cold waters, but now reports have revealed that he did have an evacuation order for passengers on board.

A separate trial for the Chonghaejin Marine Co., the enterprise that operated the ferry, is also underway. Yoo Byung-eun, billionaire businessman and owner of the corporation, vanished shortly after the wreckage, and his body was found in a field 185 miles (298 km) of south of Seoul.

In November, a three-judge panel will announce its verdict.

"Lee supplied the cause of the sinking of the Sewol. ... He has the heaviest responsibility for the accident," the lead prosecutor in the case, Park Jae-eok, told Reuters. "We ask that the court sentence him to death."

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