The 11th weekly demonstration calling on President Park Geun-hye to resign
“We weren’t all rescued. I think we escaped by ourselves. [. . .] They said they were going to rescue us, and we thought they would really do so. Since they were bringing helicopters and the coast guard, we thought it wouldn’t be a big deal. But now we can‘t be with our beloved friends, and we can’t ever see them again no matter how much we miss them for the rest of our lives. What was it that we did wrong? If there was something that we did wrong, I think it was getting off the Sewol ferry alive.”Remarks by students who survived the sinking of the Sewol ferry brought tears to the eyes of protesters at the 11th candlelight rally, held on Jan. 7 at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul. This was the first time that nine of the second-year students at Danwon High School in Ansan who were on the ferry at the time of the accident stood before the public. The nine students, named Kim Jin-tae, Kim Jun-ho, Lee Jong-beom, Park Jun-hyeok, Seol Su-bin, Yang Jeong-won, Park Do-yeon, Lee In-seo and Jang Ae-jin, promised their departed friends to “never forget them and always remember them.”
staff photographer)
With just two days until the thousandth day since the Apr. 16, 2014 Sewol sinking, Jang Ae-jin, 20, who spoke on behalf of the surviving students, expressed the students‘ guilt for the friends who had died in the accident and their bereaved families and called for a thorough investigation of what President Park Geun-hye was doing during the first seven hours of the accident.“If the president had been receiving briefings and giving instructions during the seven hours when she did not appear on the day of the accident, and if we had been told to get off the ferry immediately instead of staying in our seats, there would not have been as many victims as there are today. This obviously needs to be investigated,” Jang said.“We have remained silent even though we were the victims because we lacked the courage, because we were afraid of being criticized as in the past. But now we intend to take courage, too. Someday, when we meet our friends once again, we hope to be able to proudly tell them that we made sure that the people who separated us from our friends were held responsible, that we made those people pay the price.”
