Nearly a year after her 16-year-old daughter was among 304 people killed when an overloaded ferry capsized, Park Eun-mi says not much has changed when it comes to safety in South Korea.
“Even after what we’ve been through, I wonder why society doesn’t change, and how people so quickly forget,” said Park, surrounded in her apartment by photographs of her daughter, who is among nine victims of the ferry disaster whose body has yet to be recovered.
Public safety was mostly an afterthought in South Korea’s decades of rampant economic growth, defined by an attitude of “pali, pali,” or “hurry, hurry.”
Photo: AFP
The Sewol ferry disaster on April 16 last year led to much soul-searching — the majority of the victims were, like Park’s daughter, teenagers on a school outing. The ship was structurally unsound and the rescue operation was widely criticized as botched.
However, despite increased public awareness and government efforts to foster a culture of safety, data points to little improvement. The total number of ship accidents in South Korea rose last year as did the incidence of fires and the number of people killed in them.
Even the government acknowledges its own efforts to improve public safety, including the creation of a massive new 10,000-person ministry, will take years to make a significant difference.
“To ensure safety, we need budget and time ... and we need to change the mindset,” Park In-yong, the retired navy admiral who heads the newly formed Ministry for Public Safety and Security, said on Thursday.
The sprawling ministry’s mandate ranges from rescue operations and disaster response to elevator safety.
Sceptics say it is a political fix that merely moves functions around.
“I know even after three years on this job, people still won’t be satisfied,” Park In-yong said.
On March 30, the government unveiled a “master plan for safety innovation,” which at a cost of 30 trillion won (US$27.45 billion) would establish a control center for disaster management, improve response to accidents and highlight the importance of prevention.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye, whose government was sharply criticized for its handling of the Sewol disaster, has led a year-long effort to devise comprehensive safety standards and change corrupt practices, but she said this month that the public also needs to do more.
“A truly safe society is possible when the public’s participation in safety issues becomes a fact of life and safety culture becomes instilled in the mindset of the people,” she said.
In a February poll, 54.5 percent of respondents said safety standards and mindsets had not improved since the sinking. In a poll this month, 70 percent of respondents said government safety management had not improved, and 69 percent said they do not feel safer.
The perceptions could be because of intensified media coverage of accidents and disasters in the aftermath of the Sewol sinking, but data shows public safety is yet to significantly improve.
In one especially grisly incident, 16 people at an open-air pop concert in October last year plunged more than 10m to their deaths when the cover of a ventilation shaft they were standing on gave way; eleven others were hurt, many seriously.
In five of the eight months after the sinking, the number of fires increased from the same month a year earlier, safety ministry data shows.
Traffic accidents increased during last year from a year earlier, although fatalities fell from 5,092 to 4,762.
For the relatives of the ferry victims, especially the families of the 250 high school children who died, the past 12 months have done little to numb the pain and grief — or the anger.
“Don’t you ever say it has already been a year. Don’t you ever say we should move on. We are still living that day,” said Lee Keum-hui, who lost her 16-year-old daughter.
Her daughter is one of the nine bodies never recovered.
These days much of Lee’s time is spent petitioning or taking part in protests with her husband to push the government to bring the 6,825-tonne vessel to the surface.
“My whole family is broken apart... all we feel now is despair,” Lee said.
“We have been out on the street for the past year, trying everything we can... but nothing has changed,” said Yoo Kyung-geun, who lost his teenage daughter.
The tragedy not only scarred the victims’ families but also the survivors, including the 75 students who have faced the impossible challenge of returning to a high school haunted by the absence of 250 dead classmates.
Many adult survivors have also found it hard to resume a normal life, displaying clear symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that, in some cases, have resulted in lost jobs and divorce.
Kim Dong-soo, a truck driver who was lauded for rescuing about a dozen teenagers from the sinking ship, slit his wrists in a failed suicide attempt last month.
“Whenever I close my eyes or even look at a window, I still see the faces of the children trapped inside the ship,” Kim told reporters from his hospital bed.
“People think I’m over it because I look okay physically ... but I’m never over it,” he said.
Additional reporting by AFP
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