“The coast guard has essentially failed in its rescueoperations,” Park said during a nationally televised speech.

The coast guard’s investigative work will move to thepolice, Park added. The moves still need parliamentary approval.

Only 172 of the 476 passengers and crew were rescuedafter the Sewol capsized and sank off South Korea’s southwestern coast on April16.

Park claimed: “Aggressive rescuing operations immediatelyfollowing the sinking could have greatly reduced deaths.”

Commissioner general of the Coast Guard, Kim Suk Kyoon respondedin a government release:  “All members ofthe coast guard will humbly accept the intention of the president and thepeople and continue to push forward with the search until the last remainingvictim is found.”

But not everyone thinks disbanding Korea’s coast guard,which was set up in 1953 and has about 8,000 officers, is the right thing todo.

“It’s true that the coast guard needs to be reformed,”Choi Suk Yoon, a professor at Korea Maritime and Ocean University in Busan, saidto Bloomberg News Agency. But he added: “Disbanding the entire coast guardbecause it has botched rescue operations isn’t a very prudent response.”

In response to claims that ferry operator ChonghaejinMarine Co had over expanded the capacity of the Sewol and sought excessive profits,Park also said: “This accident shows how huge a catastrophe can be broughtabout by the abnormal collusion between the civilian sector and the government.”

The accident was the country’s worst maritime disaster infour decades and has cut Park’s approval rating to 46%, the lowest in a year,according to Gallup Korea.

Divers continue to search for the 18 remaining victims ofthe Sewol after recovering 286 bodies from the ferry that capsized en route tothe resort island of Jeju. Only 75 of 325 students on an excursion from a highschool near Seoul survived after passengers were told to stay where they werewhen the Sewol started sinking.

The 15 crew members involved in the Sewol's navigation have beenindicted. Captain Lee Joon Seok, who was not on the bridge when the shipstarted sinking, and three others have been charged with homicide.

“I spent sleepless nights in agony, thinking aboutstudents whose lives had yet to blossom,” Park said. She has has called thecrew’s actions “essentially murder.”