- 오씨 “IMF때 태어난 아들 잃어, 돈 벌 이유 없다”…70가정이 독자 잃어
뉴욕타임스(NYT)가 다시 한 번 세월호 문제에 스포트라이트를 비췄다. NYT는 동거차도에서 세월호 인양 작업을 지켜보는 세월호 유가족 오병환-권미화 부부의 이야기를 상세히 전했다.
오 씨 부부는 세월호 참사로 외아들 영석 군을 잃었다. 아버지 오 씨는 NYT와의 인터뷰에서 “아들이 죽었기에 돈 벌 이유가 없다”고 했다. 영석 군은 IMF 경제위기 때인 1997년 태어났다. 이 시기 부모들은 경제난으로 아이 하나만을 가졌고, 영석 군은 그 중 한 명이다. 세월호 유가족 가운데 70가정도 오 씨와 비슷한 처지다.
NYT는 이 같은 사실을 구체적으로 전했다. NYT의 보도는 직접적이지 않지만 세월호 참사가 얼마나 비극적인지를 드러낸다. 즉, 경제위기로 인해 아이를 하나만 낳아 키웠는데 그 아이를 잃었음을 일깨우고 있는 것이다.
NYT는 기사 말미에 여소야대로 세월호 유가족이 일말의 기대감을 가졌다고 적었다. 그 기대감이 헛되지 않도록 하는 일은 국민의 몫이다.
번역 감수 : Elizabeth 기사 바로가기 ☞ http://nyti.ms/1Ut0uHW South Korean Families Watch Ferry’s Salvaging, Hoping Truth Surfaces
By CHOE SANG-HUN DONGGEOCHADO, South Korea — Since last summer, Oh Byung-hwan has visited this island off southwestern South Korea more than a dozen times, camping out in a tent and braving monsoon rains and winter storms to watch the sea from a hilltop perch. Less than a mile away, a fleet of salvage ships float in a loose circle. Below them, resting on its side on the seafloor, is the 6,825-ton Sewol, a ferry that sank more than two years ago, taking with it 304 people, of which 250 were teenagers on a school trip, including Mr. Oh’s only child, Young-seok. The catastrophe still haunts the families of the victims and remains a traumatic experience for South Koreans, many of whom still fault the government’s response to the disaster. Like most of the victims found huddled in the ship, Young-seok, 16, had listened to the crew’s repeated instructions — even when the ship was sinking — for passengers to stay in their cabins. “Why aren’t they coming to our rescue?” Young-seok called from his tilting cabin, as seen on video footage recovered from the cellphone of another student victim. “We are here to monitor and record every move of the salvage operation, because we have learned not to trust what the government says, what it does,” Mr. Oh, 44, said from his hilltop tent, scanning the sea with binoculars and a large-lens digital camera and taking occasional notes in a logbook. I recently visited this island, catching a ferry from Jindo, the nearest island linked to the mainland by a bridge. Two and a half hours later, Donggeochado came into view, ringed by rocky cliffs. The island, home to 150 people, has no school, restaurant or hotel, and one ferry a day comes from Jindo.
The island appeared deserted, except for a few old women mending fishing nets on the concrete roadside and old men idling outside a store without a signboard. Few people climbed the hill behind the village until the families of the Sewol victims began arriving. The yellow ribbons they tied to bamboo and camellia brambles along the overgrown path spoke of their pain. “My dear child, please come visit me in dreams,” read one. They began coming last summer, when a consortium of Chinese and South Korean salvage companies began a $73 million operation to raise the Sewol. The victims’ families hope that the salvaging, expected to be completed this year, will yield the bodies of nine missing people and more clues to what happened — a question that many suspect the government of President Park Geun-hye has been evading. The families come to the island to make sure that nothing is covered up, taking shifts in a tent used as a watching post in the hills above the salvage operation. Two other tents serve as sleeping quarters. “The government never told us everything, and is more interested in covering it up than in learning the lessons to make the country safer for children,” Mr. Oh said. The operator of the Sewol, Chonghaejin Marine, routinely overloaded the ship with poorly secured cargo, and had done so on the ferry’s final voyage, prosecutors said. Inspectors colluded in the practice by giving the Sewol and other ships a cursory check from the pier, or none at all, the authorities said. When the Sewol capsized, its crew members were among the first to flee. The first coast guard boat that arrived at the scene did little more than pick up the fleeing crew members, while passengers trapped inside the ferry banged on the windows as the ship slowly disappeared beneath the waves. The lieutenant who captained the coast guard ship was given a three-year prison sentence for lying that he had used a megaphone to tell passengers to evacuate.
The disaster united South Korea in anger and sorrow. But as the families and their supporters persisted in their campaign for a more thorough investigation into the government’s responsibility, the issue became increasingly politicized. Right-wing activists likened critics of the government to a “pro-North Korean” force that threatened to undermine Ms. Park’s government. They argued that the authorities had done enough by reprimanding officials and tightening safety regulations. Fifteen crew members were sentenced to one and a half years to life in prison. Several shipping company officials were given two- to seven-year sentences. Pro-government activists also called the bereaved families “dealers of corpses” looking for greater financial compensation and said their demands had “wasted taxpayers’ money.” They even mocked a victim’s father on a 46-day hunger strike in central Seoul by organizing a binge-eating festival nearby. “The Sewol incident exposed the worst naked face of South Korea,” said Kwon Mi-hwa, Mr. Oh’s wife. She was keeping her husband company in the mosquito-infested tent on a recent evening. “For months after the sinking, Young-seok appeared in my dreams as the little boy he was when he protested my going to work in the morning and tugged at my pants,” she said, choking with tears. “Sitting alone on this hill, I sometimes wonder whether he is talking to me through the birds chirping around me.” The teenagers who died were born when South Korea was engulfed in the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. Soon after Young-seok’s birth, Ms. Kwon found a job at a pharmaceutical factory to help augment her husband’s meager wages from a textile factory. In their working-class neighborhood in Ansan, south of Seoul, many families had just one child because of the rising cost of education. In the Sewol disaster, 70 families lost their only child.
Not long after Young-seok died, a despondent Ms. Kwon screamed at her husband: “Bring my child back! I don’t care if you have to die for it!” Mr. Oh quit his job. For one and a half years, he joined other families camping out in central Seoul. “Now that my son is gone, I can’t see why I have to make a living,” he said. “I can’t go on with my life until the full truth is known about why and how my son died, until the government is made to take responsibility it has refused to take, until human lives are recognized as more valuable than profits in this country.” Mr. Oh said his hopes had risen after Ms. Park’s ruling party lost a majority in the parliamentary elections in April. Months of life on the streets have taken a toll on Mr. Oh’s health. Still, during the election, he campaigned for hours every day for a human rights lawyer who championed the families’ cause. The lawyer won a parliamentary seat by beating a former presidential aide of Ms. Park. Mr. Oh’s wife also became a full-time activist, passing out leaflets about the Sewol disaster. The couple live off the savings for their son’s education and funds pooled together by families and supporters to pay for equipment and expenses. The few nights Ms. Kwon spends at her home, she sleeps with a portrait of her son beside her. She still pays to keep her son’s cellphone number active. On May 5, Children’s Day, she texted him: “My dear only child, I am sorry.” On Jan. 12, the day her son would have graduated from Danwon High School in Ansan, she visited the school alone at night. All but one of her son’s 32 classmates had died. Their classroom had been turned into a temporary memorial, its desks overflowing with flowers, chocolates and letters. “My dear son, thank your for letting me know what happiness was,” Ms. Kwon wrote in a letter that night. “I will find out why you had to die. I can. I will. Because I am your mother.” |
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