hankyoreh

Oh Ji-won

One night not long after the sinking of the Sewol ferry, in which 304 precious lives were lost (including those whose bodies have not been recovered), a lawyer named Oh Ji-won, 39, who was working in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, had a dream about the students from Danwon High School in Ansan. In her dream, smiling students in their school uniforms had gathered in front of Oh’s house.

Affected by feelings of guilt and remorse, Oh hurried to Ansan and joined with the Korean Bar Association’s special Sewol committee to provide legal support for the victims.

That summer, Oh traveled to the US to study as she had planned, but she returned to South Korea two months ahead of schedule. She had been pulled back by the news that people were needed for the Special Committee for Investigating the Sewol Tragedy.

Since July 2015, Oh has had a new title - head of the victim support assessment team for the special committee. Her job is to travel to Ansan, Jindo Island in South Jeolla Province, Incheon and Jeju with nine members of the special committee to listen to the voices of the victims’ families who are still unable to get over the shock of the Sewol tragedy.

On many days, Oh says, she has held back her tears while listening to the victims and started to sob after saying goodbye.

The project on which the victim support assessment team places the greatest emphasis is a fact-finding study about providing support to the victims.

While there have been numerous large-scale disasters in South Korea - including the collapse of the Seongsu Bridge in 1994, the collapse of the Sampoong Department Store in 1995 and the Daegu subway fire in 2003 - this is the first time that the government has carried out a fact-finding survey of support for disaster victims.

“White papers that the government produces about the tragedy only contain the perspective of civil servants, and they have never summed up the tragedy from the perspective of the victims. It’s important to listen to the victims when we assess the government response and to use this as the basis for drawing up a manual and preparing training methods for supporting victims on the scene of disasters,” Oh told the Hankyoreh on Mar. 17 during an interview at the committee’s office in central Seoul.

Currently, the special committee‘s fact-finding activities involve assigning studies that focus on different categories of victims: the families of Danwon High School students who died in the sinking, the Danwon High School students who survived and their families, and the other passengers who survived and the family members of those who did not.

The role of the special committee is to use these research findings to prepare recommendations for government agencies and to ensure that victims are receiving the proper support.

Oh is also exploring ways for other victims - who are not covered by the Special Act for Providing Support and Relief for Victims of the Sewol Tragedy - to provide relief as well.

Along with helping the civilian divers who searched for the bodies of those who went down with the Sewol to receive treatment for their injuries, Oh has also recently launched her own investigation into the losses suffered by fisherman at Jindo Island in connection with the Sewol tragedy and options for compensating them for those losses.

As this suggests, the special committee has plenty of work to do, but it has far too few workers and not nearly enough time.

The special committee came into being at the end of July 2015, and it only has funding allocated through the end of this June. The victim support assessment team, which began with four people, still only has 10 workers.

Four months after the government promised to assign more civil servants to the team, they have yet to show up.

“It’s not easy to finish reflecting on the tragedy and devising alternatives in a single year. Given the lack of assurance for the special committee‘s period of activity, there’s sadly no guarantee that we‘ll be able to complete our mission,” Oh said.

Oh is particularly disappointed that the special committee’s emergence as a point of contention between the ruling and opposition parties has kept a social consensus from forming about the committee’s activity.

“We were able to make it this far because the families of the Sewol victims fought for the creation of the special law with the determination that they would not let anyone else suffer as they had,” Oh said.

“If another disaster occurs, whenever that may be, it’s the Korean people who are bound to suffer. I wish that more Koreans would understand that the efforts of the special committee to reflect upon and learn lessons from the disaster is ultimately for their own benefit.”

By Park Tae-woo, staff reporter

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