hankyoreh

a woman cries at the front gate of Danwon High School in Ansan

By Kim Ki-seong, south Gyeonggi correspondent in Ansan

More than 10% of the students at Danwon High School in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province who were on the Sewol ferry when it went down were from disadvantaged homes, with some being recipients of the government’s basic livelihood assistance. This makes the tragedy even harder to bear since disaster struck the students after their parents had scrimped and saved to send their children on the field trip to Jeju Island.

According to a document summarizing Danwon High School’s plan for the trip to Jeju, 329 of the 338 second-year students at the school went on the trip. The other nine students were unable to go because of their sports activities or opted not to join the trip. Four students with physical disabilities traveled by plane, and 325 students and 14 teachers boarded the Sewol ferry at Incheon Harbor.

For the students on the ship, the four-day trip - which would have lasted from Apr. 16 to Apr. 18 - cost 330,550 won (US$317.98) per person. However, 20 of the students paid 195,500 won, and 18 only paid 130,550 won. These 38 students, or 11% of the students aboard the ferry, were allowed to pay a reduced fee because of their family’s financial difficulties, which made it tough for them to cover the cost of the trip. 18 of the students were from families on basic livelihood assistance and received 200,000 won in subsidies from Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education, which barely enabled them to embark on the trip to Jeju.

The mother of one of the missing students was working at a restaurant in Ansan. “The woman kept doing more odd jobs, saying that no matter how tight their finances were, their son would only have one field trip to go on and they really wanted him to go,” the restaurant owner said, her eyes swollen from crying.

Since several of the deceased and missing students were children of workers at the Banwol and Sihwa industrial complexes in Gyeonggi Province, gloom has settled on the factories in the area. According to statistics provided by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) on Apr. 21 - South Korea’s two largest umbrella organizations for unions - 21 children of union members lost their lives or are missing in the Sewol accident.

“The mood is gloomy and people are having trouble concentrating on their work at the Banwol and Sihwa industrial complexes in Ansan. Even if none of the workers at a particular company lost children in the accident, they all know the workers at other companies,” said Kim Young-ho, head of the SJM chapter of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union. “At first they said that all of the students had been rescued, so how is it that not a single kid was saved? It‘s almost like the government discriminated in its response.”

The FKTU reported that fourteen children of union members are missing and one has been confirmed dead.

In a statement issued on Apr. 20, the KCTU said, “It is angering to think that the government’s passive and inadequate response might be linked with the social class of the parents of students at Danwon High School. If this accident had happened at a school in Seoul attended by the children of the rich and famous, would the government‘s response have been so remiss? The government has not managed to do anything about the accident.”

Gyeonggi Province after reading messages written for missing students

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