After hiding their pain for two years, Sewol siblings speaking out

Posted on : 2016-04-15 17:26 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Young people who lost brothers and sisters in the sinking often put on a brave face for the sake of their parents
Park Bo-na (left) and Nam Seo-hyun
Park Bo-na (left) and Nam Seo-hyun

There is no way to rank the sadness of losing a family member. The woman had sometimes been like a mother to her younger brother, changing his diapers and bathing him. But that same brother had also been a close friend who would have wanted to go drinking with her when he came of age in two years.

Compared to the parents of students at Danwon High School who lost their children when the Sewol ferry went down, less attention has been paid to the stories of those who lost their brothers and sisters in the same tragedy.

South Koreans are less likely to know much about the past two years of the siblings of the victims. The siblings had had to stand in for their parents when they took to the streets to demand the truth while also going to school or work and spending time with friends their age.

On the afternoon of Apr. 5, the Hankyoreh met Nam Seo-hyeon, 24, who lost her younger sister Ji-hyeon, and Park Bo-na, 22, who lost her younger brother Park Seong-ho, at Gwanghwamun Plaza in Seoul.

What Nam and Park have heard the most over the past two years is that they need to keep it together since their parents are having such a rough time.

“People didn’t ask me if I was okay; they asked me if my mother was okay,” Nam said.

“People seem to have assumed that things weren’t as hard for us,” Park agreed. “They would ask me things they couldn’t ask my mother, like what condition my brother’s corpse had been in.”

Considering that Park Bo-na had been like a mother to her little brother, such questions were agonizing.

When the parents protested seeking a thorough investigation of the tragedy, household affairs were left in the hands of the surviving siblings. Nam, who says that hardly a day goes by that she does not cry for her younger sister, could not even leave the house for 100 days. But being at home did not help her relax.

“I would wait until I was in bed to cry so that my mother wouldn‘t see me,” Park said. When her parents compared her with her dead younger brother, it made the pain even worse.

“I was in no situation to eat a hearty meal, but my mom would remark that Seong-ho had been a good eater. It hurt even more when she said that,” Park recalled.

“There are some children who appear to be trying to imitate the preferences or tendencies of their older siblings who were killed in the accident. This reflects their desire to get attention from their parents,” said Jeong Hye-shin, who has counseled the surviving siblings.

Even when public opinion was turning against the families of the victims, who were accused of being whiners or opposing the government to get a little more compensation, the siblings of the victims had to keep going to school and to work.

“After Ji-hyeon’s funeral was over, I went back to school for the first time in quite a while. When I told my friends there about the Sewol tragedy, they would say things like ‘wow,’ ‘that’s crazy’ or ‘that makes my flesh crawl,’” Nam said. “I stopped seeing all my friends because they seemed to treat the Sewol tragedy as they would any other gossip. After that, I didn’t go out.”

“A professor who knew that I was one of the Sewol victims’ families asked me if I knew what it meant to be a victim during class,” Park said.

“It hurt so much when people I had trusted asked me how much compensation we got or told me not to talk about the Sewol because they weren’t interested,” said Park Ye-na, 21. Ye-na is the younger sister of Park Bo-na and the older sister of Park Seong-ho.

Now, though, the siblings say they have developed a kind of resistance to these injuries. At the same time, this also motivates them to take more action.

While the victims‘ siblings had only watched while their parents shaved their heads calling for the legislation of the special Sewol Act and only followed along when their parents marched to spread the truth about the tragedy, they have begun speaking for themselves since Apr. 5 of last year, when they first expressed their position as siblings.

At the end of last month, the siblings took the lead in inviting university students to Ansan to take part in an event designed to give the students a fresh chance to learn about the Sewol tragedy.

Before the Apr. 13 general elections the siblings also encouraged their friends and family to vote on behalf of their dead siblings, who would have been able to vote for the first time if they were still alive.

Park even put a picture on her KakaoTalk profile that said, “The right to vote that you have given up so easily might have been something that those kids wanted so badly.”

The stories of the victims’ siblings also appeared alongside stories of the surviving students in a book called “Spring Will Come Again.”

“Rather than focusing on how much it hurt and about the injuries we’ve suffered, I hope the book will help people learn how to listen to the stories of those who are still living through the Sewol tragedy,” Nam said. Nam and those like her have something to say to the young people of their generation, along with everyone else living today.

By Park Tae-woo, staff reporter

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

 

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