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[NYT] Ferry Disaster That United South Korea Now Polarizes It

October 3, 2014

 

Family members holding the portraits of the victims of the sunken ferry Sewol, sit on the street near the presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 9, 2014.

Family members holding the portraits of the victims of the sunken ferry Sewol, sit on the street near the presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 9, 2014.

[THE NEW YORK TIMES] For months, the grieving parents of teenagers who drowned aboard the Sewol ferry have camped out on Seoul’s grandest boulevard, staging hunger strikes to protest what they call the government’s refusal to fully investigate the role that official incompetence and lax enforcement played in the disaster. And for months, the country mourned with them. The story of one father who subsisted for 46 days on water and salt gripped the nation.

But things have changed. Some groups publicly accuse the families of holding the country hostage, and said they had shared enough in the grief. Others went so far as to pitch camp near the hunger strikers, taking selfies as they gorged on fried chicken, noodles and pizza. [READ MORE]