Sewol: watch if you're a masochist

I don't know why I put myself through this, but I watched a documentary about the Sewol ferry disaster from 2014. I've embedded the video below. Hard to believe that the incident occurred five years ago. Sometimes, the feeling is still raw. Like the rest of South Korea, when the ferry sank, I recall waiting and waiting as the body count ticked upward, ever upward, over the following days. The concatenation of errors that led to so many deaths would almost be funny if it weren't so damn tragic. All those kids. Jesus, all those kids.


I don't do much that's religious these days, but sometime before this beautiful spring is over, I need to make my way over to the Sewol memorial, get on my knees, and tell those dead souls how sorry we all are—in every sense of "sorry" you can think of.