4.16.2014 – One Year On

Translated by Jeong Jisu

Photos by Na Yu-jeong

“We should remember and feel sadness. The students are the flowers that can’t blossom.” – Ji Jung Nam

On April 16, 2014, the MV Sewol passenger ferry, on route to Jeju Island from Incheon, sank off the Jindo coast. Of the 476 passengers, 325 were second-year students from Ansan’s Danwon High School on a four-day, three-night school trip. While 172 people survived, 295 bodies were found in the ship and 9 bodies have yet to be recovered.

In the following months, the surviving families and civic groups launched a campaign to pass the Sewol Ferry Disaster Special Law. The law was implemented in the first two months of 2015, but the ruling, conservative Saenuri Party delayed a Special Investigation Committee.

Nearly a year after, Gwangju News met with Lee Min-Cheol and Ji Jung-Nam, cofounders of the Gwangju Citizens’ Sangju (Mourners) Group. Lee, leader of the Gwangju Youth Center and Ji, traditional Korean theater madang actress of 23 years, reflected on the role of the Mourners Group.

“When the Danwon High School students were killed, I felt as though my students were killed,” Lee said. With many school events, field trips and national festivals cancelled or postponed as a reaction to the disaster, Lee added, “The country said to Korean citizens ‘don’t travel.’ It is nonsense.”

Lee expanded that the Sewol Ferry sinking had an effect on the nation’s psyche. “Korea is sick, not a strong, healthy country. There is desperation, anger, wanting to leave.” They started to realize we have no device, no country to make us safe. For many years, Korea developed economically but people started to feel that economic development is no longer useful and to think that we have nothing.

Ji’s madang performances have portrayed violent state incidents including the Jeju April 3 Massacre, the April 19 Student Revolution and Gwangju’s May 18 Democratization Movement, so she was particularly moved to take action for Sewol.

“In the case of people in their 40s and 50s, they felt shock and some difficulties in hope for living in Korea because they have worked in Korea for a long time,” Ji said. “In the case of people in their 20s and 30s, at first they also felt the same emotions as the older people, but in their case, they are busy looking for jobs and they have trouble focusing on this disaster. Although there is a generation gap, it is very complex.”

Ji explained that peers of the teenage Sewol Ferry victims could not believe adults anymore, sharing how a Danwon High School student lied to his teacher and attended the ferry captain’s trial at Gwangju Court to see his face.

Ji emphathized the anxiety of feeling unsafe and added that “if Koreans cannot solve this problem, we cannot live, we have to solve it ourselves.”

Gwangju’s proximity to Jindo gives the city special meaning. According to Lee, the two elements in common between Gwangju 5.18 and the Sewol Ferry sinking are the government hiding the truth and blaming the victims.

“Gwangju citizens and Sewol Ferry victims’ families can share the same mind, the same anger,” Lee said.

Lee and Ji began discussing the idea of doing something meaningful to keep the memory of the Sewol disaster alive and they decided to create the Citizens’ Mourners Group.

“Even though we are not Sewol family members, we thought it would still be good to make a citizen mourners group as a kind of a family,” Lee said.

Lee spoke of the two main lessons to learn from this disaster – finding the truth and making a better society. The Citizens’ Mourners Group uses the three-year period of mourning, a Chosun Dynasty-era tradition of sons keeping vigil at their parents’ gravesites, as a symbol of long-term change.

“We need to see this disaster using a longer term perspective. We hope to make it for three years even though we know it is not easy. When something happens, Koreans focus on it at first but we forget easily. Three years can be a symbol for making a better society.”

Regular candlelight vigils to commemorate the victims began in three residential neighborhoods – Ilgok, Cheomdan and Suwan – and they have grown to ten weekly vigils around the city. The Citizens’ Mourners Group has sustained the citywide vigils, including those outside the Gwangju Court during the trail of the ferry captain and crew. On November 15, 2014, the group launched a 1,000-day walk around the city that will continue until August 11, 2017. On February 8, the group and its supporters joined a nationwide city walk that called on the government to salvage the sunken ferry. On February 28, Ji Jung-nam was the MC at the 5.18 Memorial Foundation for Gwangju’s stop of the “Please Come Home on Friday” book tour, which gathered stories of Sewol surviving families 240 days after the disaster.

Lee and Ji believe that the Citizen Mourners Group functions to help the Ansan families heal from trauma.

“It’s not easy for the families to solve the problems by themselves so they need the true power of many citizens to help,” Lee said. “The Citizen Mourners Group is taking care of the families.”

Starting from the idea that “Everyone, even mothers, needs a mother” Ji explained that the healing project can serve as an extension of family and friendship for the survivors.

Ji also explained that the healing project can serve as an extension of family and friendship for the survivors.

“Our actions can be a reason for the families to live again,” Ji said. The parents mentioned that some religious leaders tell them to do things in a certain way so the families feel a burden from that. In the case of the Citizen Mourners group, we don’t tell them so we can feel like family or friends, people who can cry together.”

Ji further explained the influence from the various church and other religious organizations that have participated in Sewol remembrance events at Paemok Harbor in Jindo, attending demonstrations and meeting with the families.

“The Catholic Church goes down to the lower classes to help the poor people who need help. Methodists are making arts and crafts for the families so they are helping them with trauma. In the case of Won Buddhists, they promised to pay the price of the book tour. The problem is some, not all, religious groups make the families feel a burden because they tell them ‘you need to go back to your life again and pray to God.'”

The Sewol disaster has also exposed deep divisions among Korean people, as shown by supporters of the right-wing blog Ilbe staging a “food binge” alongside last summer’s Ansan families’ hunger strike at Gwanghamun Square. A conservative mothers’ civic group also demonstrated against the passage of the Sewol Special Law.

Citing the government and the press as the biggest problems, Lee explained that although the ferry captain and crew received long jail sentences, only a proper investigation could reveal the full truth.

“We need to find the truth and reasons why this disaster happened. After that, we can find who should be responsible.”

Lee maintains that the Saenuri Party will inevitably continue to disturb the investigation of the disaster.

“The important thing is that the citizens of Korea don’t forget about this disaster and they should keep their eye to the investigation.”

Ji explained that the division among Koreans is an additional obstacle to realizing the lessons of the Sewol disaster.

“There are two kinds of people in Korea: the first is the person who believes the captain’s lies and the second is the person who wants to believe his lies because they don’t feel any hope in Korea.”

Keeping hope alive of finding the truth about Sewol proves to be a big challenge. Lee points to a survey where 60 percent of people positively reacted to the Sewol Ferry investigation.

“They also realize that the current government has no use for us,” Lee said. “They have no ability to make our lives better. On the other hand, we cannot say many are involved in the campaign for the Sewol ferry disaster because they still hesitate to participate in it. We cannot be sure about the question of hope.”

While Lee and Ji hesitated to express full hope, they still believe there are choices to be made in moving forward from last April.

“We are still on the way to overcome this trauma,” Lee said. “Many people in Korea are mentally injured because of this disaster so now we have two ways to go. If we choose trauma, anyway we can feel some sadness every April. If we choose overcoming, we can solve the problem.”

Lee believes non-Korean residents are no less affected by the disaster and has been encouraged seeing international residents participating in the Sewol Ferry campaign.

“Regardless of the reasons foreigners came here, they live in Korea now so that means also non-Koreans can experience this disaster and suffer from the sadness. I consider this to be an international issue. As a result, regardless of nationality, we should find some solutions together.”

“We have two ways to go – trauma or overcoming it.” – Lee Min-Cheol