By Jon Dunbar
Foreign residents will hold events commemorating the victims of the April 16, 2014, sinking of the ferry Sewol, marking the second anniversary of the nation’s worst maritime disaster.
The Seoul Book and Culture Club will meet at 4 p.m. Saturday for a one-hour presentation titled “Two Years Later: The Lasting Trauma of the Sewol Sinking,” followed by a question-and-answer session.
The speaker will be Steven Borowiec, a Canadian correspondent who covers Korea for the Los Angeles Times.
“In the two years since the sinking, the public consensus of sadness and regret has mutated into discord,” says the Seoul Book and Culture Club in its event write-up. “Nowadays, anyone who calls publicly for an investigation into the Sewol might get called a commie or told to go back to North Korea. By following an old pattern whereby mishaps get politicized, then brushed aside, the Sewol yields insight into how South Korean society handles its darkest episodes.”
The club is run by Scottish expat Barry Welsh, an assistant professor at Dongguk University and a columnist for the Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper to The Korea Times.
Admission is free, and the event will run for two hours at W Stage Seosomun in the Joongang Munhwa Center Building near Seoul City Hall.
Meanwhile, across the river, Korea’s loudest and angriest bands are holding a fundraiser for the families of the victims, titled “Summer Never Comes Again.”
“Two years later, they still haven’t raised the ferry,” promoters say on the Facebook event page, “but at least we can raise some cash for the families of the Sewol victims. Be there.”
The lineup includes Korean and foreign musicians in hardcore, punk and grindcore bands Yuppie Killer, Arryam, Little Puppy Princess, Scumraid, Find the Spot, Agari and Ranban.
“An evening of 30-second songs done up for a cause that would take the average human 30 seconds to get furious about is apropos,” said Ian White, the Canadian guitarist of Yuppie Killer who is helping promote the event. “We might not raise a lot of cash, but hopefully the thought counts and any celebration of human dignity is in itself important regardless of scale.”
The show starts at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at GBN Live House in Mullae-dong, southwestern Seoul. Entry is 10,000 won.