Each night in the days leading up to April 16, she returns to that day, now twelve years ago.
“Why did so many people have to die? Why weren’t they saved? Why didn’t anyone tell them to come out, to jump, to escape?”
For twelve years, these questions have never left her.
In mental health, closure is not a luxury. Without it, the mind circles back — replaying the past in endless variations of what if. The questions remain unanswered, and the past does not settle into memory. It continues to intrude, reshaping the present.
For Choi, and for many of the families, closure has remained out of reach.
She is the mother of Lee Chang-hyun, a second-year student at Danwon High School in Ansan, one of the 250 students and 14 teachers who never returned from what was meant to be a long-awaited school trip to Jeju Island.
Then came the call. A pastor asking for her husband. A ferry was sinking.
At first, it did not feel real.
It was daytime. The waters off Jindo were not distant. The ship was large, visible, close to shore. There were hundreds on board.
“I thought they would be saved,” she recalls.
Inside the ferry, Chang-hyun tried to call his mother. The call never connected. Only later, through phone forensics, did she learn he had reached out.
Instead, a message remained — sent to a friend.
“Hey, the ship is sinking right now. If I die, will you come to my funeral?”
“If the call had gone through… if anyone had answered… if someone could have comforted those children, even a little, when they must have been so afraid and alone…”
Her voice fades.
It is a regret that does not disappear with time. It changes shape, but it remains.
Chang-hyun was, as she describes him, a boy who loved his friends more than anything.
He chose his high school simply to stay with them. He spent his days with classmates, drifting between school, internet cafés, and the familiar rhythms of adolescence.
More often than not, she let him be.
Then something began to change.
A teacher, Lee Hae-bong, entered his life in his second year. Chang-hyun began to think about studying, about his future, about the shape of his life.
He wrote it down — his twenties, thirties, forties — a quiet plan stretching forward.
His dream was simple - to run a bean sprout soup restaurant, a place like the one he frequented with friends, where meals were inexpensive and portions generous.
After he was gone, his mother found that note in his room.
The room remained as it was. His belongings stayed in place.
Only later, when she returned home after the funeral, did the silence settle in. The absence became real.
A never-ending replay
For hours after the ferry began to sink, part of it remained visible above the water — a tilted silhouette. There were rumors of air pockets. Reports suggested that survivors might still be inside.
Hope lingered, even as time passed.Then the ship slipped beneath the surface.
Chang-hyun’s body was found the next night, about 100 meters from the ferry.
There were no proper procedures. Bodies were placed in black bags and delivered without ceremony.
The funeral passed in a blur. People came from across the country. The scale of the tragedy overwhelmed the intimacy of grief.
The question that took root that day has never left her.
Why was nothing done? Why were they not told to escape?
Why were they not saved?
For the families, the sense that the truth has not been fully uncovered persists.
Families fractured under the weight of grief. Siblings, often overlooked, carried their own burdens. Many withdrew from public attention, wary of scrutiny and hostility.
“After 2014, my children didn’t want us to speak publicly,” Choi says. “There was too much criticism directed at Sewol families.”
Her children are still in therapy.
“For siblings and surviving students, trauma can deepen over time,” she says. “And the parents — we’ve spent twelve years out on the streets, fighting. We haven’t taken care of our own bodies.”
Support systems exist, but they remain limited — bound by timelines that do not reflect the enduring nature of loss.
Under current law, medical support is set to expire in April 2029.
Choi points to the United States, where victims of the September 11 attacks have been tracked through long-term studies for decades.
She is also calling for the passage of a comprehensive life safety law — one that would establish a permanent support system and train professional responders.
At present, support depends on individual special laws. After several years, assistance fades.
And then, another disaster follows. Jecheon. Itaewon. Osong. Hwaseong. Muan.
After Itaewon, she says, the realization was devastating.
“It was exactly the same. Nothing had changed.”
Memory, too, has become uncertain ground.
Temporary memorials have been moved. Permanent spaces remain incomplete. Even remembrance has, at times, felt provisional.
And yet, some continue. Some write poems for each child’s birthday. Some return to classrooms where desks remain as they were.
For the families, it continues — in unanswered questions, in unresolved responsibility, in the absence of closure.
Closure is not about forgetting. It is not about moving on.
It is about being able to hold the past in a form that can be endured.
What the families want is not something large: answers to their questions, a process of understanding, a way to live with what happened.
So that one day, they might remember their children without being pulled back into that day. So that grief, finally, can come to rest.
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