hankyoreh

A joint sacrament organized by the Anglican Church of Korea’s Justice and Peace Priests’ Association and another Anglican organization is held in front of the joint memorial altar for victims of the Oct. 29 crowd crush in Itaewon, Seoul, for Christmas. (Kim Hye-yun/The Hankyoreh)

On Dec. 22, when the metropolitan area and central Korea saw lows below -10 degrees Celsius, I boarded the 7 am KTX train bound from Seoul to Busan.

Even after boarding the train, my frozen fingers refused to thaw. Only when the train had been heading south for quite a while did the compartment begin to warm. When the train finally arrived in Busan, we were welcomed by a balmy temperature of 2.3 degrees Celsius.

However, not everyone in the southern region was able to bask in the warmth. I met with people for whom warmth was fleeting at best, as they were living in a perpetual cold that was made up of their sorrow. Mothers who had lost sons and daughters in the Itaewon tragedy.

“I should’ve gone to their house that day.”

“I should’ve told them to come to Busan…”

Oct. 29, 2022. If only they could go back in time. Too much time spent pondering led these mothers to guilt. Parents, who had done nothing wrong, expressed the sentiments written above. Telling them not to think of it that way was pointless. It wasn’t something that one could will oneself to do.

It has been two months since the tragedy. A new year will be upon us soon. Yet still no one has shouldered responsibility for this tragedy. No one has provided a reasonable explanation. This otherworldly sorrow has nowhere to turn. Even when people scream out for all the world to hear, no one is answering. I could tell that the parents of victims were inclined to blame themselves to make sense of the horrors. However, the truth is that they could not be further from blame.

What separated life and death that fateful night was coincidence, not anyone’s personal mistake. The victims were swept away into the alley where the unthinkable happened, pushed there, regardless of their will. Among those separated from friends there, the ones who were swept into a different alley survived.

The victims passed away because they went to buy snacks, because they wanted to go home, because they wanted to get some fresh air. It was a danger that was easily predictable, but neither the government nor the local government took adequate prevention measures. The police received reports as early as that afternoon, but no one responded properly to the threat. The responsibility for the disaster lies with the government, not with the victims or their parents.

Since the government is so full of lawyers, there may be some who want to weigh the percentage of responsibility. When the National Assembly passed a proposal to dismiss Lee Sang-min, the minister of the interior and safety, the presidential office said on Dec. 12 that his future was “something to be judged only after the absolute truth is revealed.” It sounds like they want to weigh just how culpable Lee was for the crowd crush. It sounds like something his lawyer would say.

But such an approach means that accountability will only be bucked off, perpetually pushed down the line. Citizens, grieving the tragedy, are sharing responsibility for the tragedy among themselves as they mourn.

Despite their innocence, citizens say that they are sorry for not being able to save the victims. Citizens, on-site police, firefighters, and medical staff who stayed in the ravaged alley to perform CPR, feel frustration and guilt for not having saved more people.

It is on account of these people that I realize that our society is still capable of hurting. Seeing many people claim responsibility for a tragedy gives me solace.

It may be that we soon see Lee and the other high-level government officials escaping any sort of legal responsibility for the Itaewon tragedy. This administration includes many people who are savvy enough not to say anything that might factor into indictments or provide potential grounds in an investigation or trial.

But an administration filled with people like that is not a good administration. When grieving people have nowhere to turn to, their grief turns to anger. The rage of the bereaved family members and the rest of the public who share their suffering will not be as easy to sidestep as a police investigation or prosecutors’ indictment.

“No one wants to get beyond the suffering more than the family members. But they just can’t accept it.”

The cold of winter will eventually give way to the flowering of spring. The family members of victims in the Itaewon tragedy should have been spending those seasonal changes with their loved ones; instead, those loved ones have been lost for incomprehensible reasons.

In the space of an evening, 158 worlds came to an end. Yet the officials in our administration are merely considering how they might save their own skins in the tragedy’s wake.

The way things are now, there doesn’t seem to be much hope for spring in Itaewon. Hopefully, our administration will start confronting the tragedy with an attitude of human warmth. I will make that my New Year’s wish.

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