[Editorial] In the year since the Sewol, our national community has drowned

Posted on : 2015-04-16 17:19 KST Modified on : 2015-04-16 17:19 KST
 Park Jong-beom
Park Jong-beom

The flowers are falling. In the middle of April, the white flowers are falling like tears, the red flowers like blood, and the transparent flowers like the souls of children.

304 passengers, including 17-year-old students at Danwon High School, who were in the bloom of life, as well as their teachers and others, on the Sewol ferry, are dead, a fact that is heartrending to recall amid the brilliance of the spring season.

A year ago today, when the Sewol ferry breathed its last, the deep-blue waves of the Maenggol Channel, off the coast of Jindo, were the tears of every South Korean. Indeed, the bulbous bow that ravished our retinas at the final moment is a scene that we would like to forget.

However, there were many things that we should not have forgotten: the names of the 304 people lost in the accident, the pain of the family members that were left behind, the sequence of cause and effect that produced their pain, and the fact that we are all citizens of one country that must bear, and share, all of this absurdity, tragedy, and consolation.

The past one year has been a time of desperation, when pain has been cast aside, when the sequence of cause and effect has been put out of mind, and when the absurdly simple questions of for whom the state exists, and how that state should function, become impossible riddles.

Thus, the year that passed since the sinking of the Sewol resembled those awful hours when the ferry was sinking. Just as the hull of the Sewol began to tilt at 8:48 am on Apr. 16, 2014, so the identity and system of South Korea started to weaken.

Just as Choi Deok-ha, one of the students on the ship, was the first to make a distress call at 8:52 am, so warnings that the ship of state was running aground began to be heard in various places.

Just as the captain and crew abandoned ship and were the first to disembark at 9:44 am, so the individuals who ought to have supported the national community were instead preoccupied with their own safety, leaving behind their weighty responsibility in the wheelhouse.

1 pm of that day, when the hull of the ship completely sank beneath the surface of the ocean, is the moment that we face today. This was a year when trust in the national community drowned, a year when a great truth slipped beneath the waves. The “seven hours of the president” is just one part of the truth that has been trampled.

The flower petals are being trampled, the petals that are blown in the wind through the nostalgia-filled school grounds, along the black asphalt, and into the hearts of mothers.

Our national identity and system were not the only things that broke down and sank. In the calculations of the power holders intent on concealing the truth, avoiding responsibility, and maintaining their own interests, the Sewol tragedy was tarnished by political scheming. The families of the victims were divided into different factions, and they were slandered with despicable terms such as “corpse sellers” and “tax thieves.” Protestors cruelly gorged themselves on food right in front of the families of the victims who were on a hunger strike.

The Confucius philosopher Mencius argued that one emotion that all humans must share is burenrenzhixin, which can be translated as compassion for others. This compassion, Mencius said, is what we feel when we are shocked and saddened to see a little child about to fall into a well.

The fact that the very people who watched 250 young people brimming over with excitement about their school trip as they drowned at sea could say and do such terrible things is evidence that the minimal ethical foundation propping up South Korean society has foundered.

Power holders did more than just prevent the public from fully grieving the loss of neighbors. They treated the sacrosanct instrument of the law as a toy and trampled on the hearts of the family members. The families’ demand that the fact-finding body be given powers of investigation and indictment was brushed aside with disingenuous quibbles about “undermining the judicial system.” The enactment of the special Sewol Law was dragged out for six months; five months after that, an enforcement decree was tossed out that gutted the special investigative committee and put in charge the very public officials under investigation. To top it off, the damage and compensation amounts were disclosed at no one’s prompting.

They weren’t the only ones tormenting the living and dead during the last year of contempt. The media, parroting administration announcements, botched its initial reporting on the disaster, claiming all passengers had been rescued. Since then, it has ignored its basic role of uncovering the truth, and focused instead on encouraging hate and forgetting. The crowning moment of that year came with the reports that focused solely on the compensation - a gross insult to the family members.

Bruised and battered, these families met the first anniversary of their children’s death by shearing off the one sacred thing they had left: their own hair. Three hundred sixty-five days after the tragedy, the special investigation committee has yet to launch. On a day when the heavens themselves are weeping, President Park is striding down a flower-strewn path on her way to a tour of Central and South America.

The flowers will bloom again. Because there are people who love them, people who wait for them, people who never forget.

The roots of the Sewol tragedy lay in the deep-rooted vice of greed, a mind-set that values profit over human lives. The only way to see to it that these children’s deaths were not completely in vain is by vowing to rebuild the country and create a safer society. Even if they wanted to avoid bringing all the facts to light, anyone who bears responsibility for a country should have ensured at least that much. Yet the past year has brought only a new string of disasters: fires at the Goyang Bus Terminal, a Jangseong nursing home, and an apartment complex in Uijeongbu, the collapse of a subway grate in Pangyo that sent several people to their deaths, the sinking of the Oryong fishing boat in the waters off Russia, the crash of a Coast Guard helicopter on Gageo Island in Sinan in the far southwest. Nowhere are things any safer than they were, and the cold calculus that serves profits and efficiency over human beings remains firmly in control of our politics, our economy, our society, and our culture.

Behind all this is a lack of sincerity, not only in the pledge to investigate but in the promise of a safe society. For in the end, the two were one and the same. Without the courage and responsibility to face the facts, there can never be the strength to take a lesson from them and put it into practice. This is why we must keep digging until we know the full truth of the Sewol tragedy. It’s not too late. There’s still time to put an end to this atrocious language and behavior that conceals the truth and mocks people for their grief. There’s still time, not simply to do what should have been done in this wasted year, but to execute that promise that filled all our hearts that horrible moment one year ago.

If we do this, we can dream of a day when all the passengers escape the listing Sewol with their lives. When the children return alive to the warmth of their parents’ embrace. It is a resurrection that would be cheered by the God of Pope Francis, who posed the question of how the tragedy has affected us. Young people who have already received a lifetime of pay at minimum wage would fight back from the bottom against the rule of greed, surviving through their work. This is one way for the country to live again.

Don’t call it an impossible dream. As humans, are we not noble creatures whose essence is having hearts that can sense the beauty of a fresh flower bud, and warm minds to worry for children who could drown?

 

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

 

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