By Kim Bo-eun
Bereaved family members of five unaccounted for passengers of the sunken ferry Sewol held a memorial ceremony for the deceased at Mokpo New Port, Saturday.
The ceremony was held more than three and a half years since the ferry sank off the coast of the southwestern island of Jindo and killed over 300 passengers, most of them students of Danwon High School, on an excursion to Jeju Island, on April 16, 2014.
The family members had stayed at the ports of Jindo and Mokpo throughout the three years and seven months, waiting for the remains of their loved ones to be retrieved. But on Thursday they stated they would move on, as searches were coming to an end.
The five whose remains were not retrieved are two second-year students of Danwon High School Park Young-in and Nam Hyun-chul, Danwon teacher Yang Seung-jin, and two other passengers _ a father and son Kwon Jae-keun and Hyuk-kyu.
Their coffins were instead filled with their belongings.
Present at the ceremony were members of a civic group representing the bereaved family members of the Sewol disaster, Minister of Oceans and Fisheries Kim Young-choon and former minister Lee Ju-young who had served in the position at the time of the Sewol disaster, Reps. Park Jie-won and Chun Jung-bae of the People’s Party and Sim Sang-jeung and Youn So-ha of the Justice Party, around 200 citizens and bereaved family members of the unaccounted for passengers.
The families will hold funerals at halls in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, and in Seoul through today.
The belongings of the deceased will be cremated in Suwon and Incheon.
The cremated belongings of Danwon students Park and Nam, and teacher Yang will be buried at a park in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, where other victims have been buried.
Those of Kwon and his son will be buried in a park in Incheon.
The Sewol ferry was taken to Mokpo in April for an internal search. Searchers retrieved the remains of four out of the nine passengers who were then-unaccounted for.
The family members of the five unaccounted for passengers had stayed at a makeshift shipping container home at Mokpo New Port for the past seven months. But on Thursday they held a press conference at the port, and announced they had made the decision to accept the deaths of their loved ones and move on.
“We knew that some disapproved of our requests for the ferry Sewol to be salvaged and searched, but we were unable to let go because of our wishes to find the remains of our family members,” they said.
“But it occurred to us that requests for further searching would be unreasonable.”