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launched in South Korea for university professors to discuss the Sewol ferry sinking with their students.

In 1965, University of Michigan professors who opposed the Vietnam War held all-night lecture and discussion sessions with students. Since a 2011 mega-earthquake off the country’s eastern coast, researchers in various areas in Japan have met regularly to study disasters and share data online with the public. Those are attempts to work together to confront the reality of disaster.

Now a new online project has been launched in South Korea for university professors to discuss the Sewol ferry sinking with their students. The Sewol Classroom website (http://teachsewol.org) was unveiled on Apr. 17 by an editorial committee made up of professors from numerous universities, including the Catholic University of Korea, Kaywon University of Art and Design, Seoul National University, Sookmyung Women’s University, POSTECH, Hanyang University, and KAIST.

“What we need, in addition to the political, social, and legal process of finding the truth and determining responsibility in the Sewol tragedy, is an effort to understand its significance as an incident,” the committee said.

The project includes participation from faculty in science, sociology, and law, among other areas, with data collection and analysis from KAIST graduate students. Financial support is provided by the KAIST College of Liberal Arts and Convergence Science, while the social innovation firm Cause & Company is providing technical assistance.

The classroom is a repository for classroom textbooks that are compiled from different data sources and shared. The materials are available for anyone’s use in classrooms. While the materials provided to date are relatively small in number, professors with the editorial committee plan to share more from their efforts over the past year as well as their future joint studies.

The names of the first materials posted by the committee are more questions than answers. “What does it mean when human lives are treated as numbers?,” reads one. “How can we repay the victims for their loss?,” asks another. “What are we presuming when we refer to the Sewol sinking as a ‘transportation accident’?,” asks a third.

“The Sewol Classroom will be a place for professors to talk about how they are experiencing the same kind of grief, anger, and frustration as the students, about how all of us have lost our way,” said Jeon Chi-hyung, a professor at the KAIST Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy and member of the editorial committee.

By Um Ji-won, staff reporter

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