The captain of the Sewol ferry that sank off South Korea’s tip has avoided the death penalty.  Judges sentenced Lee Joon-seok to 36 years in prison for professional negligence and abandoning his passengers during the disaster in April that killed more than 300 people, most of them high school students on holiday.

At 70-years old, a prison term of more than three decades is effectively a life sentence for former Captain Lee.  The Gwangju District Court judges found him not guilty of the most-serious charge “homicide through willful negligence”, taking the death penalty off the table.  The chief engineer got 30 years, and 13 other crewmembers were sentenced to terms up to 20 years in prison.

Survivors said they were told to stay in their cabins and wait for rescue.  But Lee was widely vilified after he was caught on video jumping into a rescue boat with hundreds of people still on board – and for some reason, he was pantless at the time.

Last week, three relatives of the ship’s billionaire owner were sentenced to up to three years in prison, about four months after the tycoon was found dead after he fled the law.