Prisoners of the Cosco Busan
This comes to us from the Bay Area magazine East Bay Express. Interesting article that discusses the human impact of the Cosco Busan incident, and the effect on key crew members from the ship who were sequestered in San Francisco for over a year in an exotic mix of legal limbo. It is an interesting read regardless of your personal opinions on the incident. It no doubt highlights the complex international issues that surround the maritime industry and shipping in particular.
When Liang Xian Zheng took a job working as the boatswain on the Cosco Busan, the seasoned seaman knew the $29.50-a-day gig would send him out to sea for six to ten months. He also knew it meant undertaking a wearisome 1,000-mile journey from his home in Beijing, China to the port of Busan in South Korea, where the container ship was based. But what Zheng couldn’t have known was that, two weeks after boarding the cargo ship and ably performing his duties as a lookout during a crisis, he would be trapped in a foreign land on an exotic legal warrant, in misery and legal purgatory, until months after his seafaring expedition was supposed to have ended.
In the only known US photo of the detained Cosco Busan crew members, sailors meet with Chinese consular officials in a San Francisco hotel room.
Read the whole article here
