Many of the victims from this weekend’s tragedy in #Itaewon/#이태원 were in their 20s, which means they would have been in their tween/teenage years when the MV #Sewol disaster (#세월호 침몰 사고) happened on April 16, 2014.
I’ve been thinking about Sewol a lot over these days. I have memories of seeing it on the news and discussing it in my high school law class, but it was only after coming to Korea that I really understood the scope of what happened, the gov't's complicity, & social impact it had.
On August 17th, I travelled down to Ansan in Gyeonggi-do for a visit to Danwon High School and the Danwon High School 4.16 Memory Classroom. The memory classroom was designated on December 27, 2021 as National Archives of Korea No. 14 by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.
The memory classroom is where classrooms from the 2nd & 3rd floor of the school were relocated after the school's reopening for educational use. It is here that the 250 students and 11 teachers who passed away during the sinking of Sewol took their last class.
When I say that the classrooms were moved in their entirety, I don’t just mean the desks, chairs, and blackboards, but even the ceiling tiles, door frames, and baseboard trim were moved and reassembled like a puzzle.
Visiting was indeed an emotional experience for I was guided by the mother of one of the deceased students, Han Goeun. I believe I was the only visitor at the time. We walked through the different classrooms together and I listened as she told me about her daughter.
Han Goeun was only two years my senior. Like me, she loved taking pictures as well as videos. She had founded a video club at the school with her friends and dreamed of one day becoming a camera director for Seoul Broadcasting or KBS.
She was tall and strong and could easily carry around all the heavy camera equipment that she would need for her future job. Her body wasn’t recovered until 22 days after the ferry sunk.
She was so strong in telling me her story, and I had really had no words to express how sorry I was for her loss in Korean, let alone English.
We spoke a bit a longer about other things, and she asked me if I could show her how to use an app on her phone; something her daughter would likely have been able to help her with if she were still alive.
For the rest of my visit, I walked slowly between the desks looking at the portraits of other students and reading about the dreams they never had the chance to fulfill.
Lee Janghwa was a gentle boy who enjoyed sketching and wanted to become a fashion designer. Kang Sunjeong liked to draw too and wished to become a wedding dress designer. Her boyfriend Yang Cheolmin and his friend Song Kanghyun were avid soccer players.
Heo Dayoon volunteered her church’s daycare centre for multicultural families and wanted to become a kindergarten teacher. Yun Sol dreamed of becoming a police officer.
All of these students had dreams for future, which they never got to pursue because they were failed by their country’s government. Those who died in Itaewon were unfinished stories too. They were in the primes of their lives, and we will more about who they were as individuals.
Life can be short, brutal, and painful. It can take your loved ones away without notice. Be kind, compassionate, and forgiving. Never stop telling them how much you love them.
*we will eventually learn more about who they were as individuals.
*Excuse the few typos in this thread... the unfortunate result of trying to cut paragraphs down to fit within 180 characters.
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