hankyoreh

Gyeonggi Province

By Kim Ki-seong, south Gyeonggi correspondent in Ansan

“I never knew the TV news and the newspapers could be so sad and cruel. I just hope those kids come back alive.”

The man, who appeared to be in his fifties, had tears in his eyes as he pressed his hands against a bus leaving on the morning of Apr. 18 from the gate of Danwon High School in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, for the site of the Sewol passenger ferry sinking.

Describing himself as the owner of a nearby restaurant, the grief-stricken man said, “I couldn’t just sit there. It’s so sad when all you can do is pray.”

The prayers continued inside the school gates. The door to the eleventh grade teachers’ office was covered in small notes expressing heartfelt wishes. “Mr. Lee Hae-bong!” read one note. “In the first class, you told us that ‘Hae’ meant ‘ocean’ and ‘bong’ meant ‘phoenix,’ which makes you ‘king of the ocean.’ Please come back quickly!”

Another student wrote a message to a missing friend. “What are you doing there where it’s cold?” the student asked. “You need to get back here.”

The classroom bulletin board for Class 10 of eleventh graders listed a homework assignment of “coming home safely and not dying.” In the Class 8 classroom, the notebooks, textbooks, and pencil cases of missing students were laid on the desks, with a plaintive message pasted on the glass. “The teacher won’t nod off in class anymore,” it read. “Please come back. If you come back soon, your classmates will share snacks with you secretly during afterschool study.”

A print of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” hanging in front of the Class 9 classroom seemed a chilling visual representation of the horror faced by students trapped on board the sinking ship. All of the eleventh grade classrooms were plastered with notes bearing tiny messages.

Around 500 students and residents gathered at the school gymnasium for a candlelight vigil on the evening of Apr. 17, as heavy rains poured down. “Even the heavens are crying,” a resident said as the participants joined together to wish for the safe rescue of trapped students.

The sadness and prayers were also visible at nearby Danwon Middle School. Out of the high school’s 325 eleventh graders on board the Sewol, 104 had graduated from Danwon Middle School. Thirty-three of the middle school’s students have siblings among the missing. Sounds of prayers for the students’ lives echoed throughout the morning and evening.

“Everyone is praying that there are no more victims,” said Kang Yeon-su, the middle school’s principal. “We’re all lending strength in whatever small way we can.”

85% of the students who left for a field trip on the Sewol came from Ansan’s Danwon District, with 109 from the neighborhood of Gojan, 97 from Wa-dong, and 70 from Seonbu. The mood in the district was one of deep despair.

“Such things shouldn’t even happen in a war,” said a 63-year-old female resident surnamed Park. “I just hope they come back alive somehow.”

Criticisms of the fumbled government response have also been growing louder. Han Hye-suk, a 38-year-old Suwon resident, visited Danwon High School with her newborn baby on her back to pass out handmade fliers criticizing the government.

“It’s so horrible to just sit there and watch as all those young lives are being lost in the cold waters of the ocean,” she said.

Lee Hee-seong, a 48-year-old company employee, was tearful while visiting the funeral home of Korea University Ansan Hospital.

“The government’s response was worse than what happened with the sinking of the Titanic a century ago,” Lee said. “It’s pathetic. I’m ashamed to live in this country.”

The previous day, a man in his fifties stood at the hospital entrance carrying a sign reading, “There’s no time left. Madame President, give an emergency order to rescue the survivors.”

“Please rescue our children from the cold ocean waters,” the man pleaded, bringing many visitors to tears.

At the high school, the grief mounted as more or more names of deceased students went up on a “funeral home status” list at the entrance. A 70-year-old watching the bulletin board was left at a loss for words.

“It reminds me the Gwangju Massacre [in 1982] and the people going around looking for their family members’ bodies,” the visitor said.

At Korea University Ansan Hospital and other locations where students and teachers were laid to rest, the tears overflowed throughout the day from young students paying their last respects. And with news that the high school’s vice-principal took his own life, apparently out of a sense of guilt for the tragedy, the tragedy seems for the moment to have no end in sight.

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