Koffee & Kpop

I was on my way to the Seoul Metropolitan Library with my book club back in February when I passed the memorial altar for the victims of the 10-29 Itaewon crowd crush.

After our meeting, I stopped and paid my respects. Bowing my head in front of the photos, I wondered at the faces behind the placeholder images of a white chrysanthemum.* In America, photos of the victims of tragedy (and often the perpetrator as well) are plastered all over the news, but here, families have decided against posting images of their lost beloved, perhaps for privacy reasons. To this day, I don’t know if there is a full list of the names of those we lost that night.

Quickly gazing over the photos of the young people who lost their lives that night, most being in the 20s and 30s, my eyesight landed on an image of a young boy dressed in a gray high school uniform. That was when I choked up and tears finally came to my eyes. Was I staring at the 159th victim of the crowd crush, a teenage boy who, after witnessing the death of two friends, later took his own life?

A man reached out to me as I was leaving to offer free memorial stickers, a small purple ribbon keychain, and a post-it note where I could leave a note.

“Oh, you know Korean,” he said, as he noticed that I had signed the post-it note with “I love you” — 사랑해요

As I was walking back to the station to go home, one by one, purple scarves started appearing around the necks and shoulders of people walking in the opposite direction. A somber realization: these are protestors. These are the families and friends of the victims, on their way to protest at the memorial altar, to continue demanding answers from the government.

I’m learning, but no, I wouldn’t say that I know Korean. I certainly don’t know enough to have stopped and joined the protest and understood what was being spoken through the microphone. I don’t know how I would express my feelings to the families and friends of those deceased; “I’m sorry for your loss” doesn’t have a Korean translation.

Grief, however, does not have a tongue. It is shared, but never spoken. Furthermore, grief is not what I share with them–it is a spirit of fighting, of demanding answers, of remembering. We will not forget you.

*They ask you not to take close-up photos of the photos in the altar but my distance was respectable and I was encouraged to take photos.