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The Art of Witnessing: The Sewol Ferry Disaster in Hong Sung-dam's Paintings
"In somewhere there is no separation, we shall talk about the story that we haven't finished, share the love that we haven't fulfilled, and be together forever. My baby, I love you always. From mom, loving and waiting for you, tonight, in February 2018."(The 416 Families Association and the 416 Memory Archive, 2018:225–226)
On the morning of April 16, 2014, the Sewol Ferry capsized and sank off the southwest coast of South Korea, killing 304 passengers—most of them were teenage high school students from Ansan on a field trip to Jeju Island. Almost three years later, the sunken ferry was recovered from 40 meters underwater. At the scene of the rusty ferry lying on the ground of Mokpo Sin Port like a huge grave with victims' remains buried inside, victims' families were devastated to witness the tragic site where their loved ones had struggled for life. The material evidence of the catastrophe testifies to the victims' grievous deaths. Since its establishment in 1948, South Korea has been built on numerous civilian deaths that were unjust, concealed, and not even allowed to be mourned (D. Kim, 2013). Yet what is particular to the Sewol Ferry disaster is that its tragic moment was repeatedly broadcast and became a real-time media spectacle. Soon, a vast number of visual images—in particular, those of the sinking ferry only showing its inverted hull above the water—were produced, reproduced, and circulated through mass media and social media as a reminder of the catastrophe. The images were then carried over into the field of visual culture in various forms of photography, video, film, painting, and performance. The proliferation of the arresting images attests to the primacy of the visual in the Sewol Ferry disaster and points to an increasingly formative role of the visual in shaping and reshaping public perceptions.
The visual representation of catastrophes has been examined in visual studies and trauma studies in relation to the notion of witnessing. In their edited volume The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture, Frances Guerin and Roger Hallas (2007) offer ways in which images facilitate specific possibilities to bear witness to historical trauma. They emphasize that witnessing...