By Suki Kim
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
In April 2014, South Koreans watched in horror as TV news showed live footage of a huge ferry tilting 50 to 60 degrees, sinking into the sea. Aboard were over 300 high school students on a school trip to Jeju Island, the country’s most popular resort. Initial reports said the students were all rescued, but it soon emerged that they were, in fact, still on the ship. The nation watched in real time — for two and a half hours — as the ship sank completely and disappeared from view. It would turn out that rescue efforts had been botched, and the captain and crew had escaped in lifeboats after telling the students and other passengers to stay put. The trapped teenagers sent final video messages to their parents, some of which were broadcast on the news. No statement came from the Blue House or President Park Geun-hye, whose whereabouts was not clear. Seven hours later, President Park finally appeared, visiting the Central Disaster Safety and Countermeasures Headquarters and asking, “Why is it so hard to find the students if they are wearing life jackets?”
Within two years, Ms. Park’s approval rating was 5 percent, the lowest of any president in modern South Korean history. Over a million Koreans took to the streets, demanding her resignation. I was among them.
On Oct. 29, 2022, another tragedy consumed the nation when 156 people were crushed to death at a Halloween gathering in Itaewon, Seoul’s liveliest neighborhood. The news footage showed bodies strewn around the pavement, with people performing CPR while club music pumped through the air. Most of the victims were in their 20s, the age that the teenagers on the Jeju Island ferry would have been had they survived.
As hundreds of casualties were transported to hospitals and a nearby gymnasium turned morgue, it was once again parents who were summoned, to administer care or to identify the bodies. They told interviewers how their sons had just finished taking an exam and were looking forward to a night out, or how their daughters had just been accepted to their first jobs and were meeting friends to celebrate. Such innocent fun is the privilege of youth, and beholding it is supposed to be a reward for parenthood. Since the ferry disaster, multiple parents and relatives of victims have committed suicide.
