China's biggest paper opens memorial site on website

By Kim Se-jeong

China’s People’s Daily homepage is serving as a medium for delivering condolences to families of the dead and the missing from the ferry Sewol, which sank on April 16 off Korea’s southwest coast.

“This is in response to what Koreans showed us when China was shaken by an earthquake in Sichuan Province. It was great support, and we would like to return our support to the families of the victims,” said Zhou Yubo, head of the paper’s Korean bureau. The Sichuan earthquake occurred in 2013.

Launched on April 29, the memorial site is available at https://korea.people.com.cn. The People’s Daily is one of the biggest newspapers in China with over 380 million daily visitors to its website.

The memorial site was a joint-project with www.sunfull.or.kr, a non-profit organization based in Seoul dedicated to anti-cyber bullying campaigns.

With Min Byoung-chul, a renowned English educator and a professor at Konkuk University, as its founding member, the organization gathered condolences from Koreans for the families of the Sichuan earthquake victims last year, and presented them as a book.

“It was very well received,” said Zhou during a phone conversation with The Korea Times, Tuesday.

Created in 2007, sunfull.or.kr aims to stop the culture of making vicious online comments.

To visit the memorial site, go to https://korea.people.com.cn. and click the top banner.