With more than 7,000 miles between Atlanta and South Korea, our city’s thriving Korean community can only wait, pray and seethe.
Close to 300 remain missing after Wednesday’s ferry disaster, and the search for survivors becomes less promising by the hour.
“Everybody in Korea is deeply saddened about the tragedy. Every Korean media outlet is only focusing on this. We feel the same way here,” said Sung Ku Hong, director of the Atlanta Korean Film Festival. “We are reading about it on the Internet. Really looking for some good news. Looking for miracles.”
But by late Friday there were few miracles. Only recriminations. As rescuers continued to search the frigid waters of the Yellow Sea, the captain of the ill-fated vessel, Lee Jun-seok, 69, was charged with abandoning the boat, negligence, causing bodily injury and other offenses.
The tragedy was compounded by reports that the vice principal of Danwon High School, which still had 236 students missing at sea, hanged himself from a tree near a gymnasium where families of the missing had gathered. Kang Min-kyu was 52.
Including the students, as many as 270 people were still missing and presumed dead after the ferry became completely submerged. South Korean officials have reported 29 deaths on what was supposed to be a simple trip from Incheon, a port west of Seoul, to the resort island of Jeju.
The hub of Atlanta’s vibrant Korean community is centered in Gwinnett County — particularly Duluth — where there are a number of shopping districts, churches and businesses.
The Chosun Daily News of Atlanta, has been running three or four stories a day about the capsized ferry, said Sook Hee Cho, chief reporter.
HB Cho, a reporter for The Korea Daily’s Atlanta bureau, said many locals are sending messages and prayers and monitoring news through KakaoTalk, a Korean-based mobile messenger application.
News of the ferry accident has kept regulars buzzing at the Korean-American Senior Association’s community center in The Good News Garden Presbyterian Church in Norcross.
“Everybody is shocked, everybody is watching television, everybody is talking, talking, talking,” said Byung Kim, as members filed in for lunch and an afternoon of bingo.
Kim is the vice president of the association and has kept up with every development in the case, he said.
He is saddened by the apparent loss of so many students aboard the ship and equally dismayed by the vice principal’s reported suicide. Kim said he understood why Kang Min-kyu might have taken his own life, citing a Korean tradition that holds that leaders are responsible for the lives of those below them, especially children.
“He didn’t have to kill himself, but then he would hold a guilty feeling until he die,” Kim said. “To him, there is no choice. (He did it) from the heart.”
Which is why, Kim said, he feels nothing but contempt for the captain of the ship, who allegedly turned over the steering of the vessel to a subordinate. Once the ship began to sink, the captain reportedly was among the first to abandon it while passengers were told to remain on board.
Asked what should happen to the captain, Kim made a thumbs-down gesture with his right hand then slowly drew the same hand across his throat in a slicing motion.
“The captain, he has to die himself, if he is responsible,” Kim said.
Atlanta’s Korean community
About 100,000 Korean citizens or persons of Korean descent live in Georgia, according to Patricia West, an executive assistant at the Korean Consulate in Atlanta.
Cho, the newspaper reporter, said that, as with many immigrant groups, older Koreans are usually more invested in what is going on in the country they left behind than are their children. Many of the younger generation were born in America, or came here when then were very young. Cho’s paper, for example, is written in Korean and read mostly by older Koreans, interested in politics. Younger Koreans rely on social media, he said.
“There is a big generation gap. My counterparts and people born here don’t really care too much about what is going on over there,” Cho said. “But for a big accident like this, it is different. A lot of people feel sorry they are too far away to go help. They are anxious and having difficulty going about their day, because of the remorse they are feeling about this.”
In Norcross, at Friday’s meeting at the family center of the Korean American Association of Greater Atlanta, a group of Korean ministers led attendees in a short prayer for the victims.
Kook Ja “Cookie” Lee, the director of the family center, said she has neither been contacted by any local members of the Korean community who may have had family members on the ship, nor has she heard of any scheduled vigils for those lost.
“It’s a silent sadness,” Lee said. “Some people don’t want to talk about it, but they watch the news.”
As a mother, she said, her heart was heavy for the loss of so many young people. “But young, old, it doesn’t matter, it’s very sad.”
Asked what should happen to the captain of the ship as the case proceeds, Lee did not hesitate.
“I was not there, so I cannot make a judgment,” she said. “All we can do is pray.”
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