hankyoreh

Apr. 24. On the same day

Choi Deok-ha, 17, a second-year student at Danwon High School, came back as a cold corpse, wearing a tag that said No. 141. Choi died, even though he was the first one to report that the Sewol ferry was tilting. The only people who boarded the Coast Guard patrol boat that responded to Choi’s call were the captain and crewmembers, who fled the ship, abandoning the passengers. Dispatching a ship, albeit belatedly, after receiving Choi’s call, the Coast Guard was able to save the precious lives of 174 people on the scene of the accident on Apr. 16. But in the end, the person who made the call and many of his friends were not rescued. Unable to escape from the ship, Choi was found dead in his fourth floor cabin on Apr. 24, eight days after the accident.

Choi was mature, and he was in control of himself. At 8:52 am on Apr. 16, he called 119, South Korea’s emergency number, and told the Jeonam Fire Services that the ship seemed to be sinking. This was the first report of the accident. When he was connected with the Mokpo Coast Guard two minutes later, the Coast Guard staff wasted time, asking a 17-year-old high school student about the latitude and longitude and the name and classification of the vessel. Choi remained calm, telling them the name of the ship. At 8:58 am, after six minutes after that, the Coast Guard launched a patrol ship, which took 30 minutes to reach the scene of the accident.

The Coast Guard control center on Jindo, which was closer to the site of the accident, had no idea that a ship was passing by or how many people were aboard, let alone that there had been an accident. About 30 minutes after that, at 10:08 am, the ship sank. Precious time had been squandered.

As they waited to be rescued, Choi’s classmates were calm and collected, too. Even when the ship began to tilt precariously, the students waited in their cabins wearing their life vests, not causing a commotion. They were probably not just doing this because they trusted the PA announcement telling them to stay in their cabins. They probably thought that if they maintained order and waited, they would soon be rescued. After all, they had made a distress call, the Coast Guard knew about them, and there were plenty of grownups outside.

But at the very moment that there was an urgent need for lives to be saved, the grownups were stalling, unsure of what to do, and dumbly watching as 300 lives slid beneath the waves before their very eyes. The regrets about not rushing into the cabins to evacuate the passengers, about not smashing the cabin windows on the tilting ship and letting down ropes, have changed into sighs of despair. This wretched country betrayed the trust of the people who believed in it and were waiting for it. What more can the government say to Choi and his friends?

His friends called him “Deok-ha Choi,” reversing the Korean order of his name. The only thing left on his Kakao Story are the words “I’m bored, hehe.” “He was just like any other youngest child,” an aunt said of him. Tall and skinny, Choi had practiced Kendo for more than four years, reaching the second degree. He left the dojang in June 2013, saying that he wanted to focus on his studies.

“He had a great personality. Deok-ha is all what the kids at the dojang are talking about,” said his Kendo instructor. “He was so foolish . . . if he called the Coast Guard, he ought to have gone up on the deck . . . ” For the instructor, who was already coping with the death of a pupil at the Kendo dojang, Jeong Cha-ung, yet another pupil seemed “foolish.”

On Apr. 24, Danwon High School resumed classes after a weeklong break. The second-year students who had died aboard the Sewol also made a final appearance at the school, carried in several hearses. But they have yet to find all of the passengers who were lost in the cold water. Starting on Apr. 25, the current will reportedly become more treacherous, making it harder to recover bodies from the ship for the time being.

In the end, it may not even be possible to satisfy the heartbreaking wish of the parents of the missing, the desire to hug their children one last time before saying goodbye. It is only natural to hold accountable those who brought about this horrendous situation. If the Coast Guard and the responsible authorities are not strictly punished for their negligence, their incompetence, and their dereliction of duty, this kind of tragedy will happen again.

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