hankyoreh

Emergency rescue teams on July 16 recover the body of a person who died when an underpass in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, flooded during a downpour. (Yonhap)

“My nephew was two months into his marriage. He left early that morning to drop his brother-in-law off for his test to become a teacher.”

A 30-year-old surnamed Kim was among those who died when an underpass in Osong, a small suburb of Cheongju, flooded during torrential rains over the weekend. When the Hankyoreh spoke with Kim’s uncle at the Hana General Hospital's funeral home in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, on Sunday, he repeatedly expressed feeling “resentful and angry.”

Kim’s body was the first to be recovered from Gungpyeong No. 2 Underpass on Saturday.

Kim was a newlywed two months into his marriage. From a young age, he had to take care of his single mother. He harbored dreams of becoming a teacher, and succeeded in achieving that dream.

The day of the incident, he was driving his brother-in-law to his exam venue when disaster struck.

Once the water level in the underpass started to rise, the two managed to get up to the roof of their car.

While Kim's brother-in-law was able to escape by swimming, Kim himself was swept away by the muddy water and never came back.

In Kim’s eyes, what happened at the underpass was “clearly a man-made disaster.”

“The district and provincial offices are calling it a natural disaster, but it could have been prevented,” he said. “We are going ahead with the funeral in the usual way, but still, it's infuriating. It’s frustrating that we cannot express our anger and sadness to anyone.”

Lee, 49, the uncle of a person missing in the accident, also seemed at a loss for words at the unforeseen tragedy.

With difficulty, he finally said, “My niece (24) recently graduated college and got a job. Yesterday was her day off, so she apparently was going on vacation with three of her friends. Two of them arrived early [in Yeosu, South Jeolla Province], but my niece and her other friend who were right behind them on a bus got caught up in the storm and weren’t able to make it out.”

The 747 bus his niece was on entered the underpass after taking a detour from its original route, which was shut down due to the heavy rain. Lee’s niece called her friends who had already arrived at Osong Station. “The bus is filling up with water. The driver is saying we should break the window and escape,” were her last words.

The son-in-law of a woman in her 70s who was on the same bus and went missing said, “My mother-in-law usually doesn’t take this bus, but I think she did because it would get her where she was going faster.”

Park Dae-gyu, the son-in-law of another woman who went missing in the incident, shared a similar story. “I reported my wife and her mother as missing to the police after not being able to get ahold of them. When they tracked their phones, the last signal from the person they were with came from the underpass,” he said, sobbing.

Yet another person, surnamed Kim, 74, who had family go missing in the incident only learned what had happened from their daughter-in-law. “I heard my son was carpooling with someone to work,” they said. “Too much time has passed. They say that there’s no chance of [surviving in] air pockets. It feels hopeless.”

When search and recovery efforts were restarted on Sunday, family members of those still missing gathered at the rescue site requested that the deceased be identified, but were told that it was impossible to verify identities on-site, forcing the anxious families to keep waiting.

There’s been confusion among families of the missing as well, as the hospitals that are able to verify the identities of the bodies are not the same hospitals where the deceased will be prepared for their final rest.

By Kwak Jin-san, staff reporter; Kim Ga-yoon, staff reporter

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