Everyone who was here probably has some memory of that day. It was a Wednesday. I know because our high school had switched out the Friday for the 4.19 memorial one-day field trip. It was going to rain on Friday, April 18 so we went on Wednesday, April 16. I was with the second graders, incidentally the same age, hiking up and down Damyang’s Geumseongsanseong Fortress trails, where the students did a funny and moving outdoor theater performance depicting the 4.19 Uprising of 1960 that drove Syngman Rhee from power. It was exactly the kind of spring day that made you believe in revolution and hope, the spring season of life. I walked and talked with my students among the jindallae and all the other natural sights inside the fortress walls. I had been at the school just a few days shy of 1 year, so maybe I missed any pained looks on the faces of the teachers. Maybe some of them knew, even up there. I never asked. It wasn’t until we came back to the entrance of the school in the early evening that my friend and co-worker ran up to me, frantically saying “There’s been an accident. A ferry has sunk.”
Over the next few days, we lived in a state of disbelief, as the surreal truth spread around us like the waves off the Jeju Coast: 304 people were still in the ferry, and they would never return to land. I taught classes as normal. I even smiled and laughed. But within one week, it became that after just over two years in Korea, I was witnessing my first public tragedy in my new adopted country. The TV news became a steady body count. The rage of the Danwon High School families rose, as they went from sleepless days and nights in the Jindo auditorium, to marches and gatherings across the country. Yellow ribbons fluttered everywhere. We went to Paengmokhang in Jindo. Students left the memorial altar in uncontrollable tears at the knowledge that these were their “friends,” of the same age. We gathered at neighborhood vigils. Demonstrations continued non-stop. The trial of the captain happened in Gwangju where I lived. The Diving Bell documentary was censored at the Busan Film Festival. Park Geun-hye was eventually taken down. Other tragedies took place.
Those six years have flown by and though it was so real for so much of the time, the details of all the rallies and the political upheaval have become blurry for those of us no longer directly involved. Yet I can say without a doubt that the Sewol ferry sinking changed my life forever. As an outsider and a bystander, it taught me about collective grief, solidarity, activism, resilience, and most importantly, the elusive feeling of empathy. I realized that empathy, the ability to feel another’s pain, is how we retain our humanity. When we lose empathy, we lose everything. When I wonder about the starting point of empathy, for me at least, I don’t think it starts from the cacophony of collective pain and struggle, the cries, the protests, the hunger strikes. I can’t quite find it in the numbers of bodies as they rise, counted daily on the TV screens. For a while, I even feel numb seeing the faces of the survivors in their suffering, even while meeting the families face to face. It all felt like nothing but performative mourning, the thing I had to do, as a social activist, whatever it is I was trying to be. The starting point, the breaking of the barrier, was realizing it could be me too. The moment I could imagine the coldness of the water, imagine seeing my classmates and others walking safely to shore from inside the ferry, and knowing that this was the end. Imagining the loneliness of that senseless death and how fast and early it came for hundreds of teenagers. Death is lonely. From that moment, I could count the numbers. About the size of the whole high school where I worked. Suddenly I could imagine all those voices suddenly go silent, an empty cafeteria, classrooms, hallways, the yard. A complete emptiness. That’s when I understood. That’s when I could look the families in the eyes and allow them every single step of their struggle, everything they still deserve and haven’t gotten. While other memories fade, it’s the ability to feel empathy that I always fight to remember.
Now we’re living through a worldwide public health crisis. It’s another cycle of politics and pointing fingers and shouting for change, and rightfully so. But that’s not the starting point. Once again, I feel it’s about empathy. About imagining that lonely death. It could be any of us. It’s OK to feel that, the terrible weight of it. It means we are still alive. And we must fight like hell for it.
Love Letters to the Present 