04.10.2023

Active in the Absence: South Korea’s Sewol Ferry Disaster

The Sewol ferry, bound for Jeju Isle in South Korea , began to sink. On board were 476 passengers, including 325 students on a school trip. Mobile phone footage records students struggling to stay on their feet in their cabins, the atmosphere calm but uncertain.

A disaster began to quietly distribute at 8: 49am around April 16, 2014.

Dashcam footage showed cars sliding across the car deck as the ship tipped.

A passenger had made an emergency call at  8:52am, a nd through radio communications the authorities were notified. The ferry continued to sink.

A single patrol boat arrived and the captain escaped the ship at 9:47am. No one had called for the passengers to evacuate.

Over the coming hours, the rescue operation never intensified – not when passengers wearing life jackets began to jump ship, not when the ferry tipped entirely on its side, and not when it sank so that only its prow remained above water.

More than 300 people, mostly school children, had lost their lives.

In the aftermath, a group of civilian divers came to assist the coastguard’s rescue efforts. For months they retrieved the bodies and belongings of victims. Public protests – and calls for justice from the victims’ families – would also help driving the removal of President  Park Geun-hye in 2017.

Using phone furthermore dashcam footage, recordings towards radio communications, and the providers of survivors, civilian rescuers, and families of the deceased,   In the Absence  plagues the Sewol ferry tragedy ? catastrophe ? calamity in meticulous detail, which offer an unflinching look at just one of South Korea’s great tragedies, and the layers of deterioration and neglect that produced it.

FILMMAKER’S OBTAIN

By Seung-jun Yi

April 16, 2014. The day has become one of the most disappointed days in the modern history of Korea to most of the Korean men or women. They watched the bad of MV Sewol ferry, live on TV, and 304 passengers and crew contributors including 250 high school students unique school trip were put to sleep. It was painful and disturbing, not just because of the number of all the victims, but because of the fact the fact that they could have been saved.

Five years have already transferred since the disaster, but Is possible still witness the couronne of the victims’ families, civilian divers and many more people that were affected by the tragedy.

After a long lookup, it has turned out that the this was not just an unfortunate dureté but was a systemic disappointment from the social-political frailty akin to Korean society.

Even though it was a clear fail of the rescue operation, some people has been punished except our own captain of the coastguard sail boat.

History instructs us that tragedies say again if we easily forget about items. The victims’ families try to find out us to “Remember ‪16 April”. It’s not only a connect with to support their demand for a nutritious investigation, but it is also the ones wish not to witness type tragedy again in any community.

Human beings could be vulnerable to “time”. As time goes on, all of us forget many things. Time may make us dull. It is as a black hole that absorbs our thinking and ambiance.

We need to sometimes be awakened about this world, the machine and order which are halting this world. I want people to flippantly the day, remember what happened to that day. And I i actually people do not forget that if a strategy fails to operate correctly, it can result in terrible pain in addition to trauma to innocent folk in the end. The pain which might not get curable. This film has been my plea for people on the way to wake up and keep your attention on the systems.

Source:   Al Jazeera

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