School pays poignant tribute to ferry victims
Print Edition
A floral tribute to the children who drowned in a sinking South Korean ferry displays photographs of the victims in their school uniforms, while lines of empty spaces wait to be filled with photos once those still missing are confirmed dead.
The pictures, flowers and spaces are banked up the entire wall of a gymnasium near Danwon High School in Ansan, on the outskirts of Seoul.
“There are too many pictures, way more than I thought,” said crying university student Jung Sun-a, 24. “And they are too young in these pictures. I really hope they can fulfil their dream in the next life. And I hope the missing kids will also come back to their parents as soon as possible.”
One wailing old woman shouted out for her granddaughter, Lee Bo-mi. “Bo-mi is still in darkness. She hasn’t come home yet. What are we going to do? I came here to ask you. She is still in dark waters. What am I supposed to do?”
The Sewol ferry, weighing almost 7,000 tons, sank on a routine trip from the port of Incheon, near Seoul, to the southern holiday island of Jeju. The probe is focused on human error and mechanical failure.
More than 300 people, most of them students and teachers from Danwon High School have died or are missing and presumed dead after the April 16 disaster. The confirmed death toll yesterday was 185.
School classes resumed on Thursday in somber mood. In the classrooms of the missing, friends posted messages on desks, blackboards and windows, in the days after disaster struck, asking for the safe return of their friends.
A professor who led a psychological counselling at the school said the children now distrusted adults who fought amongst themselves, did little to rescue the passengers and told them to stay put.
“That is an obstacle in our treatment,” he told local radio. “Without dealing with the mistrust, it is hard to approach them to help cure them. Yet such distrust cannot be dealt with words only. Once betrayed, how do you expect them to believe us again?”
Captain Lee Joon-seok, 69, and other crew members who abandoned ship after telling the children to stay put in their cabins have been arrested on negligence charges. Lee was also charged with undertaking an “excessive change of course without slowing down.”
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