SEOUL, The Supreme Court on Tuesday finalized a suspended prison term for a former vice oceans minister charged with interfering with an independent panel's investigation into the cause of the deadly sinking of the ferry Sewol in 2014. Yoon Hag-bae, who served under the then Park Geun-hye administration, was indicted in 2018 on charges of ordering ministry officials to come up with and implement various measures to interfere with the activities of a special investigation panel looking into the accident. The panel was set up in 2015 under a special law to determine why the 6,800-ton ship capsized and who was responsible for the tragedy that claimed the lives of 304 people, mostly high school students on a school field trip. A district court had initially sentenced Yoon to one year and six months in prison, suspended for two years, but a higher court reduced the sentence to a six-month prison term, suspended for two years. The Supreme Court, however, struck down the verdict and sent the case back to the hi gh court for retrial, and the high court sentenced him to a revised one-year prison sentence, suspended for two years. The top court finalized the sentence Tuesday, the 10th anniversary of the sinking, one of the country's deadliest maritime tragedies. Four other former high-ranking government officials were also indicted on charges connected to the interference with the investigation panel, including former presidential chief of staff Lee Byung-kee; An Chong-bum, a former senior presidential secretary for policy coordination; and former Oceans Minister Kim Young-suk. Not-guilty verdicts were finalized for the three, while Cho Yoon-sun, a former senior presidential secretary for political affairs, received a finalized six-month prison sentence, suspended for a year. Source: Yonhap News Agency