A year earlier, Korea was drawn into an abyss of disbelief and grief when a ferry carrying 476 passengers, mostly teenage students on a school trip, sank off the southwestern coast, leaving more than 300 dead or missing.
On Thursday, the country marks the first anniversary of the maritime disaster while engulfed in a snowballing scandal over allegations by a late construction company owner that he gave large sums of money to figures close to President Park Geun-hye.
Park is scheduled to attend a ceremony to mourn the victims of the sinking of the Sewol hours before she embarks on a trip to four South American countries. The swirling scandal, which may eventually touch on the financing of her 2012 election campaign, is prompting more negative public sentiment against the timing of her latest overseas trip.
Whatever consideration may be behind scheduling Park’s trip, it does not make sense for critics to insist on the president canceling or delaying visits she has already arranged with Colombia, Peru, Chile and Brazil. But the unfolding graft scandal makes it more difficult for Park to argue that she has carried through her pledge to build a country totally different to what it used to be before the ferry sinking.
Thousands of members of civic groups and bereaved families of the victims clashed with police after holding an event at the weekend to protest what they saw as the government’s inappropriate and hasty way of putting an end to the ferry disaster. Streets in downtown Seoul were paralyzed late into the night as protesters pushed against the police barricade in an attempt to march toward the presidential office.
This violent clash might have prompted many sensible citizens to ask the question of whether the country has made any real changes since the Sewol sinking, in which a complexity of problems permeating all corners of Korean society caused the loss of 304 lives.
Over the past year, a string of fatal accidents have occurred across the country, despite the government’s pledge to ramp up public safety. But it may be unfair to put the blame for the incidents only on government agencies, as many Korean citizens seem to remain little changed in their habitual disregard of or indifference to rules and principles needed to make everyday life safer and more secure.
What is further regretful is that the conflict and divide in Korean society have been deepened in the course of coping with the aftermath of the ferry tragedy. The Park administration is certainly responsible for having not done enough to settle complaints and suspicions raised by the victims’ families. But now may be the time for bereaved family members to become more considerate in pushing ahead with their demands, particularly as Park recently made clear her intent to salvage the sunken ship, as they have requested.
It may not be helpful for making the lessons from the tragedy take root in Korean society that some partisan motivations continue to be allowed to be implicated in the final phases of settling the disaster.
A thorough probe into the scandal involving Park’s aides is needed not only to change money-contaminated politics, but to block moves by outsiders to make further political use of the ferry tragedy. Then the country would take a meaningful step toward a true change.
