Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared from the skies, on 8 March. No wreckage has been found. The 329 passengers and crew are still missing.
Six weeks later, on 16 April, a South Korea ferry, Sewol, sank. Most of the 300 people who are dead and missing, were teenage students on a school outing.
In both cases, the rescue operations by the respective governments have been badly managed with news reports citing poor information gathering, a slow response by the rescue teams and conflicting information.
On 27 April, the South Korean Prime minister Chung Hong-won took responsibility for his government’s poor handling of the Sewol ferry recovery operations and resigned. He said, “… I saw grieving families suffering with the pain of losing their loved ones and the sadness and resentment of the public…†and “There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again.â€
Back in Malaysia, acting Hishammuddin Hussein brushed aside all criticism about his government’s handling of the search and rescue (SAR) work and said “we have done an admirable jobâ€.