Opinions

A divided South Korea mourns in shame

Yesterday morning my dad said, “I’m embarrassed to be a Korean,” and as hard as it is to admit, I’m starting to feel the same way.

It’s been a week since the South Korean ferry, “Sewol,” sank with 302 passengers still on board. There were more than 300 high school students from Ansan on a field trip among the 476 people on the vessel.

 The South Korean news media is circulating the story 24 hours a day with updates on recovering bodies and public statements from the government, mostly shaming the captain and crew during the time of the disaster.

In light of the mounting miscalculations that led to the nation’s largest maritime disaster in decades, South Korean President Park Geun-hye scolded the ferry crew saying, “Behavior of the captain and some crew members is beyond understanding and no better than homicide,” according to an article from Los Angeles Times.

Geun-hye is being criticized for her actions during the tragedy as well by the South Korean crisis management, which is saying that the crew members on board the ferry were not well trained or equipped to handle this kind of scenario.

The nation is shaken by this tragedy, and Korean Americans are feeling the rumble as well. During this incredibly difficult time, many Korean Americans are lashing out against the South Korean Ministry of Security and Public Administration and the elders who misled the passengers on board.

With the release of distress calls from the students on board hitting the news everyday, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to sympathize with the South Korean government.

Several media publications have reported that, through direct orders from the crew members, the high school students watched the water rise above their necks, and sat obediently without objection.

During a time when Koreans should be supporting each other more than ever, many South Koreans are ashamed and left with a bitter taste in their mouths because of how poorly the government handled, and continues to handle, the crisis at hand.

Although South Korea pulled itself out of abject poverty to become the world’s 15th-largest economy, according to LA Times, the South Korean cultural system is still set in the past.

As a Korean American, I carry on the traditional cultural values I was raised to conform to;  respecting my elders is possibly the most significant of those.

Raised in a culture where children are taught to respect their elders, and place full trust in their guidance, the students had nowhere else to turn in the time of crisis.

“I can’t understand how they could stay in their seats as the water was rising,” said Song In-ji, a 15-year-old freshman at the Danwon school, to the LA Times. “We can’t trust anyone anymore.”

Although the ferry crew and captain are in the process of being charged with manslaughter resulting from negligence, the nation will never be the same.

For the parents who were directly impacted by this tragedy, justice will never be served. How could you forgive a country that allowed your children to sink to their grave?

The blame isn’t solely on the crew on board, though. It’s the backward customs existing in South Korean culture that should shoulder the burden of blame.

Although respecting your elders is a value that shouldn’t be dismissed, it comes to a point where misplaced trust can be extremely damaging to a society. The students on board were misguided, which ultimately led to this devastation. The crew on board was advised through their superiors, the South Korean government.

The hierarchy of “respect” in South Korea needs to be questioned and the nation should re-evaluate its cultural system overall.

As of now, I mourn for my people, but shun the South Korean nation for their lack of social responsibility.

As an anonymous Ansan Red Cross uniform member said to LA Times, “The parents believe that the government buried our young children alive at sea.”

One Comment

  1. Avatar

    I think that articles like this create more disunity, dissension, and most detrimentally, misapprehension about an entire culture in this time of crisis and tragedy. While everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion, I think that this particular article contained many biased stances that stem from a Western perspective. The danger in that is that the Eastern perspective becomes a sort of “Other”, which we as Asian-Americans have been striving against and continue to combat in Western society. Statements like “…the South Korean cultural system is still set in the past” and “It’s the backward customs existing in South Korean culture that should shoulder the burden of blame” fuel a very cookie-cutter perspective on what it means to be Korean (and Korean-American) in 2014. While I definitely sympathize with the writer regarding suspicion of certain values and the way the South Korean government is handling the crisis, I must say, I was very disturbed and quite offended by the aforementioned statements and I think such a perspective misguides non-Koreans about traditional Korean values, perpetuating certain stereotypes that we struggle with daily.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.

Daily 49er newsletter

Instagram