April Coward’s Day
Every April brings pain to a certain group of Koreans who lost their children or friends to the tragic Sewol Ferry Disaster.
In April, 2017, I visited Berlin. It was three years after the tragedy. I was there to watch a documentary about the incident. After the screening, there was a discussion session with the families of the victims.
I hadn’t known there would be such a moment, so I wasn’t exactly prepated. I hesitated for a bit, caught off guard, then quietly found a seat.
The conversation lasted longer than expected. But out of a dozen or more people in the room, only a handful actually spoke. I sat there in silence, convinced by some ridiculous, gloomy delusion that I wasn’t even qualified to participate in the discussion.
As things were winding down, the bereaved invited us to take some items they had brought from Korea — yellow bracelets, pins, keychains — all free to take. People swarmed the table where the items were laid out.
And in that moment, I couldn’t help but think that those pins and bracelets — rather than being symbols of grief or resistance against injustice woven into our daily lives — felt more like merchandise. A kind of “merch” people grabbed onto, just to remind themselves that they care. That they are good people.
Maybe others felt the same.
Maybe that’s why we had all stayed quiet.
That night, back at my hotel, the next day on the train home, and even after I returned to my apartment, I kept regretting that evening.
Regretting how cowardice, once again, had left me doing nothing. Or rather, choosing to do nothing.
Even though I knew time never flows backward, I still looked away and kept walking forward, leaving behind footprints that seem to only prove my gutlessness.
To cry with others, to rage with them, to resist with them. Isn’t that what it means to live as a full human being?
But I was alwyas too busy moving forward.
And whenever I did look back, I wasted my energy trying to erase the evidence of my own cowardice.
And the truth is, I’m still the same.
I’ve changed universities, I wear different clothes, I’ve watched the years pass and the seasons turn. But I’m still a coward.
