The nation's top court on Thursday upheld a life sentence for the captain of the sunken ferry Sewol for murdering 304 passengers aboard.

Upholding a lower court's ruling, the Supreme Court said Lee Jun-seok, 70, willfully neglected his duty as a captain to evacuate passengers when the ferry sank off the southwest coast on April 16, 2014.

"While he could have easily informed the passengers of the urgent situation and reduce the number of casualties, Lee fled the ferry without doing so," Chief Justice Yang Seung-tae said. "Even after Lee escaped, he did not provide information on the situation onboard to the Coast Guard, being totally indifferent to the passengers' safety."

Lee ordered the passengers to remain where they were and failed to have them evacuate while he was among the first to be rescued, the court said.

When the judge read out the verdict, saying what the captain did was equivalent to drowning the passengers, some of the bereaved families in the audience shed tears.

The ferry was en route to the southern resort island of Jeju from Incheon, west of Seoul. Most of the 304 victims were high school students on a field trip.

In April, an appeals court convicted Lee of murder, overruling a lower court's decision that found him guilty of gross negligence and dereliction of duty, giving him a 36-year prison term. (Yonhap)