Just when I thought there could be no event more horrible and heart-wrenching than the missing Malaysian airliner, the mystery of what happened to the 239 people on board, and the suffering of their families, the sinking of the Korean ferryboat has taken nightmare to another level. Now, on top of the reprehensible behavior of the captain and able-bodied crew, it turns out that the ferry may have been way overloaded with cargo that was not tied down properly.
The Korean Prime Minister has resigned, a high school vice-principal has hung himself, and Koreans the world over are feeling a collective sense of shame, disgust, and mourning. There is so much I could say about what I am feeling, but even better is to hear from a teenager from Korea, Yeon Soo Cho, an international student at the Hun School of Princeton, who herself has made the trip to Jeju Island.
— Euna Kwon Brossman
This past April 16 was my 19th birthday and at the same time turned out to be what I consider the most tragic day of my entire life. Sincere apologies to many friends who greeted me with a cheerful, “Happy Birthday, Yeon Soo,” but honestly, that day couldn’t be a happy birthday for me. I will always remember my birthday in the year 2014 as the day the Sewol Korean ferryboat sank, an event that will forever be a dark day in my country’s history.
The majority of the victims were high school students, just two years younger than I am and a year older than my brother. They could have been my friends. They could have been me, since I also went to Jeju Island for a school field trip when I was in high school in Korea. That these students encountered this tragedy when they were so very excited by their trip to Jeju struck me harshly.
As an international student from Korea who began to study abroad just a year ago, I understand so well just how intensely hard Korean high school students work, especially during this school year, the equivalent of junior year in American high schools.
A lot of my friends and I feel great sympathy for these students, who had to go through all the hard academics and then ended their lives without getting a chance to “chill out” and have fun.
Most of the attention has been on the students from Danwon High School, but there were also victims who were not high school students, such as a little eight-year-old boy who lost his whole family on his way for the family trip to Jeju Island. It broke my heart when I read the last sentence of a Korean article that said the boy will not stop asking his grandmother, “Where is my mama? Where is my hyeong (Older brother)?”
I almost burst into tears when I read about the six-year-old big brother who gave his life jacket to his five-year-old sister. She survived. He did not. What a big hero at such a tiny age. There was another story about a boy and a girl, either sweethearts or fraternal twins, who must have realized that they were going to die, so they tied their life jackets together. Rescuers found their bodies still tied together.
Along with great sadness I, along with thousands of Koreans, feel irrepressible fury about the irresponsibility of the captain and the crew members. They made the most erratic emergency announcement, telling their passengers, “Keep yourself where you are. Do not move. It’ll be dangerous then. Keep your spot.” And then they abandoned the ship as well as the poor passengers and saved their own lives. If the passengers had been told to jump into the water instead of staying inside the boat, more of them would have been rescued.
Koreans are also shocked by the behavior of some people who wanted to gain attention, so they manipulated text messages and spread them throughout Facebook, Twitter, and KakaoTalk, a popular Korean instant messaging service. “I’m still in the ship, surrounded by the wounded people. Please save me; I am in cafeteria,” said one of those messages.
One of the pranksters was discovered to be an 11-year-old boy. I feel heartbreak for the poor families who believed their loved ones might be alive, only to discover these messages were cruel hoaxes.
Even the Korean media spread false information. For example, a 25-year-old woman who claimed to be a licensed diver went on television and criticized the government for blocking volunteer divers from getting into the ocean. She claimed she had communicated with victims deep inside the boat.
Many viewers believed what she was saying, causing them to doubt what they were hearing from the government. Very soon Koreans realized that this woman didn’t even have a basic diving license while she pretended to be an expert diver. Hyper-competition of the media overwhelmed their ability to deliver accurate, non-biased information, and this led to total chaos and outrage among citizens.
Many Koreans are now going through a wrenching identity crisis. In addition to mourning the loss of hundreds of lives, they are highly disappointed by the ship’s captain and crew, the media, and the pranksters. Even though all the bodies are still not yet recovered, my country is going to face years of soul-searching, as the investigation moves forward to find out how this horrible tragedy could have happened. There are huge questions for the authorities of the marine company and the officials who were supposed to monitor the ship’s safety.
I have asked myself what I would have done if I had been on that boat, if I had been in my cabin or the cafeteria and heard the announcement to stay put. Honestly, I probably would have done exactly what so many of the students did — I would have kept my spot instead of moving out — not because I would have blindly obeyed authority, but because I would have regarded the person making the announcement as the expert with the best experience and knowledge to know what to do in such an emergency situation.
The news has reported how so many girls crowded themselves together into cabins meant for many fewer people. In Korea, girls are especially supportive of one another; in such a fast-moving emergency, I also would have wanted to be together with my friends.
Thinking about this terrible ferry accident has taught me a crucial life lesson: that you can never completely trust the words of others, that even though you may think they are the experts. Maybe they really don’t know everything they should and they are only thinking of saving themselves. It is best to use your own senses to figure out what is going on and make the best judgment of your circumstance. It could mean the difference between living and dying.
