Some countries encourage their kids to learn to swim. South Korea isn't one of those. I think this was a major factor in the number of deaths here. If you don't know how to swim and it's cold outside you might not be wanting to jump into water not warmer than 50 degrees or so. The likelihood of survival at these temperatures is about 50 minutes before you either become completely dysfunctional from hypothermia or you just pass out and start breathing water.
So, this likely is another factor in what went wrong with this ferry. However, since this tragedy for South Korea compares almost in number (in a ratio) to what the problem of 9-11 was for the U.S. I'm sure South Koreans will be more apt to teach their kids to swim and have them move to the sides of a boat if they think it is going to sink with life jackets on in the future. (It is said they all had life jackets on but there wasn't time to deploy the lifeboats before the ship capsized). Ferries tend to be more flat bottomed boats than normal ships in order to carry cars and people so if they take on water past a certain point on one side or the other they are sure to capsize like this one did. The captain was one of the first people off the ship because he likely knew this.
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