hankyoreh

Gyeonggi Province

By Kim Ki-seong and Kim Il-woo, staff reporters in Ansan

President Park Geun-hye delivered condolences for the victims of the Sewol ferry sinking, but not an apology. Angry family members of the missing passengers screamed and pounded their chests, and the commemorative flowers sent by the President were discarded once she left the site.

Park arrived at the mass government memorial altar to the victims at around 8:50 am on Apr. 29. The site was newly set up at Hwarang Public Garden in the Danwon district of Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, home to most of the victims of the tragedy. The site was moved from its original location at Ansan Olympic Memorial, which was too small to accommodate large numbers of mourners. It was her second visit in connection with the sinking, after an Apr. 17 meeting with family members at Jindo Gymnasium in South Jeolla Province.

Dressed in a black suit and wearing white gloves, Park observed a moment of silence and lit incense before portraits of the victims. As she lowered her head in front of the images showing the victims’ youthful faces, family members began erupting into shouts of indignation. “What if it had been your child? What would you have done then?” asked one family member. “You come all the way here and don’t say one word of apology,” cried another.

“In memory of those who passed away in this sudden accident. May they rest in peace,” wrote Park in the visitor’s book. As Park was writing in the book, a man behind her shouted, “If the President is here, shouldn’t she see the bereaved families first?” A woman kept sobbing, saying, “These are your children!”

After signing the visitor’s book, Park was walking toward the exit when she stopped in front of ten of the bereaved family members. “This is not going to be fixed by the resignation of a single official,” they complained. “This is why Koreans want to leave the country.” As Park listened to the complaints and the desperate pleading of the family members surrounding her, she nodded her head and sighed from time to time.

“You should have stayed at the scene of the accident until the very end. Isn’t that so?” said one bereaved woman. “Why does everyone keep shifting the blame? I was talking on the phone with my daughter until 9:48 am. Until that time, she was wearing her life jacket and was laughing,” the woman said, unable to hold back the sadness welling up inside.

“I didn’t even receive any notification that the memorial altar was being moved,” another family member complained. “You are exhausting the grieving families.”

As Park fumbled to make a response, a man said, “We don’t want to see the captain put in prison or anything like that. We really have to address these institutional problems.” At this point, Park finally said, “You’re right. After this is over, there will be a cabinet meeting. At the meeting, we will eliminate all of the deep-rooted evils that have been building up all this time. We will make sure that the sacrifice was not in vain.”

The complaints did not stop, with family members claiming that they had to take care of the funeral arrangements themselves because the victims were not being given the treatment they deserved. Eventually, Park said that she would look into it and find out who was responsible. Next, she told Blue House Political Affairs Secretary Park Joon-woo to listen to all of their grievances and resolve the issues.

But Park never did make an apology. At 9:08 am, Park slipped out of the memorial building, surrounded by her security.

Watching Park’s vehicle driving away, a relative of the victims in his 50s brushed tears of sorrow from his eyes and asked, “Why did she even come?”

After Park departed, the family members shouted for the bouquet of flowers she had brought to be removed from the memorial. In the end, the flowers that had been brought by President Park; National Assembly speaker Kang Chang-hee; Prime Minister Chung Hong-won; Saenuri Party (NFP) leader Hwang Woo-yea; Minister of Security and Public Administration Kang Byung-kyu, and Minister of Oceans and Fisheries Lee Ju-young were all taken outside.

Later that same day, 110 bereaved family members of Sewol victims formed the ‘Sewol Ferry Bereaved Family Committee’, calling for a thorough fact-finding investigation, active search for the missing and punishment of those responsible for the crisis.

At a press conference held next door to the new altar, committee representative Ryu Kyung-keun, commented on President Park’s apology at a cabinet meeting, saying, “Having seen what President Park did at the memorial altar, it looked like nothing but a commercial. I cannot accept the way she made the apology in front of the ministers, which seemed forced.”

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