ed 6 months after Sewol

Six months have passed since the nation’s worst maritime disaster on April 16, which killed more than 300 people. Yet the relatives of 10 passengers whose bodies have not yet been recovered still stay in an indoor gymnasium in Jindo, anxiously waiting to see if the remains of their loved ones will be found.

Their grief runs deeper with the passage of time because not a single corpse has been pulled from the sunken ship Sewol since July 18. Divers are currently attempting to conduct searches on the fourth floor of the vessel, but little progress has been made because access is blocked by a heap of detritus.

Adults helplessly watched on as so many young people died, while being trapped inside the sinking vessel. This triggered a profound nationwide shock ― how backward and corrupt our society has become despite decades of economic development. President Park Geun-hye vowed to reinvent the country across the board so that people can live in greater safety, but little has been done about this over the past half a year. Rather, it was established during a parliamentary inspection of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries that the number of maritime accidents that occurred until the end of August since the April 16 calamity was 341, an increase of 99 incidents in comparison to the same period last year.

In retrospect, the ferry tragedy was entirely man-made ― the result of illegal remodeling of the ship, irresponsible behavior among members of the crew, the botched rescue operations and a corrupt nexus between private companies and state regulators.

What’s most disheartening is that the sinking has become a source of political strife, rather than one of national unity, which caused the National Assembly to be crippled for months because the ruling and opposition parties clashed fiercely over the contents of a bill intended to enable an independent inquiry into the tragic incident.

At stake is what to do regarding the search for the bodies of the 10 missing passengers and when to start salvaging the sunken ship. With winter approaching, it won’t be easy to continue the search operations even though the victims’ families insist that this be done. So it might be time for them to voluntarily ask the government to stop the recovery work.

The prosecution unveiled the results of its five-month probe into the disaster earlier this month, but many questions still remain unanswered. This should be a compelling reason for the rival parties to cooperate and pass the special Sewol bill by the end of this month without fail, as scheduled. A fact-finding commission, to be established under the proposed law, should focus on uncovering the truth without political bias.

Now the most important thing is to learn genuine lessons from the calamity and make our society safer.