hankyoreh

families of missing Danwon High School students wear white masks while holding signs at the memorial altar for victims

A recent contribution to the Hankyoreh by the philosopher Kim Yong-ok has been turning into a real phenomenon. Since the piece went up last weekend, tens of thousands of comments have gone up on the country’s major portal sites. An explosive response has also been seen on Facebook and Twitter. Many praised Kim’s piece, which denounced the government’s irresponsibility in the Sewol ferry disaster response and demanded the resignation of President Park Geun-hye, as “this era’s top intellectual bravely saying what needs to be said.” Park and her administration need to face up to how strongly the public is feeling right now.

But the way events are unfolding now gives little hope that Park’s perceptions are going to change in any meaningful way. After the apology she delivered at an Apr. 29 Cabinet meeting only made the situation worse, she announced on May 2 that another apology to the public would be forthcoming. Who responds to a situation like that by announcing a future apology? Apparently, the response to people criticizing her for “apologizing from the chair” was to say that it wasn’t actually an apology, and that the real apology is still to come. These repeated apologies aren’t going to make her look sincere.

Perhaps because of her concern about the public outrage, Park paid a second visit on May 4 to Jindo, the site of the disaster. She made her first mention of her own responsibility, saying, “I feel endless responsibility for everything from the accident occurring to the way it’s been handled.” But she seems to have failed once again to win over the victims’ family members. The message conveyed in her 30-minute closed-door meeting with them was one of grief-stricken tears and cries of protest.

The incompetence and irresponsibility of the administration’s response to the Sewol disaster is enough to make you ask just what the state exists for in the first place. Yet Park and her administration take every chance that arises to call for “punishing rumor-mongers,” as though rumors were the cause of the bungled response.

All this has done is fan the flames of anger. Family members of victims at Danwon High School in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province ended a three-day silent protest on May 5 by demanding a rigorous special prosecutor’s investigation and punishment of the people responsible. “Seeing the response by the accident countermeasures headquarters and the administration feels like witnessing a gigantic fraud,” said one family member. It’s not hard to imagine that they made these demands because they feel no other way of expressing the utter heartbreak of it all.

The presence of so many students and young mothers in the demonstrations is another sign of how serious things are. On Apr. 30, stroller-pushing mothers were out in force at Seoul’s Gangnam Station to protest. They held a second march at Hongik University Station for Children’s Day on May 5. The theme of the events is expressed in the words, “We can speak because we’re mothers.” The message the women sent is that the cold bodies still being retrieved from the waters off Jindo leave them questioning whether they will be able to enjoy life with their own children.

On May 3, hundreds of middle and high school students headed to Cheonggye Plaza in Seoul for a candlelight vigil to remember the Sewol victims. “Is it right for the administration to blast every question raised about its disaster response as ‘following orders from Pyongyang’?” the students asked. “We’re afraid that if you say the wrong thing, you could end up ‘disappearing.’” It’s a clear sign of just how deep the distrust of the administration lies.

A former preliminary Saenuri Party candidate for Seoul mayor ended up facing a heavy backlash after posting Twitter and Facebook messages alleging that students were “being paid 60,000 won (US$58) a day” to protest. That seems to show about where the minds of the administration and the country’s ruling class are at. At this rate, the public’s anger is only going to grow.

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