Author Topic: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy  (Read 12481 times)

vajrastorm

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Re: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy
« Reply #15 on: April 25, 2014, 06:16:30 AM »
In both the flight MH370 tragedy (which still remains largely a mystery) and this latest tragedy of the sinking of a South Korean ferry with 459 people on board and more than half feared dead, the cause has still not been established.In both instances, everyone of the passengers set out on that ill-fated day/ night expecting to arrive at their destinations at the scheduled times. But both sets of people didn't arrive at their destinations. Here we see so powerfully how karma controls us all and how our lives are so fragile when death and the manner of death are so uncertain.

While we pray that the Three Jewels continue to protect them all and their loved ones, we should never dismiss or trivialize the Dharma teaching that we have received.
 
The Vice Principal, who had committed suicide because he felt guilty and responsible for so many deaths from the tragedy, is himself a victim, so sadly, of his own misplaced sense of responsibility. To me this is the greatest tragedy of all. With Dharma, he would have known that it was karma at work, and he couldn't possibly have prevented that tragedy from happening. Out of ignorance(NOT KNOWING), he took his own life, which is a gross transgression, with heavy karmic consequences,though his  motivation in wanting to 'express' his sense of responsibility may be  mitigating in effect . Nonetheless, his complete disregard of his wife and children and of his needlessly causing them such suffering, cannot be set aside.

These tragedies make me more determined then ever that I must bring precious dharma to others for their benefit and ultimate peace.
   

Kim Hyun Jae

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Re: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy
« Reply #16 on: April 25, 2014, 02:22:38 PM »
The Korean ferry tragedy hits me harder than the incident of MH370. It is because majority of the passengers were young, went on a school trip and were planning their college entry. So much hope for all of these young people who has bright futures.

It wakes me up and I questioned "what is life", ignorance and impermanence. "What is life" leads me to having a purpose and direction. Ignorance leads me to question whether we can acquire wisdom or knowledge beyond. Impermanence leads me to value lives and don't take things for granted.

kris

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Re: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy
« Reply #17 on: April 26, 2014, 05:55:08 AM »
there are indeed so many tragic news lately.. first there is the MH370 (which until today still cannot be found), and then this ferry tragedy. actually, it is already a know fact that people will definitely die one day, and we also don't when a person will die. we need to accept this as a fact and nobody can escape this. therefore, when someone we know pass away, we should not be "surprise" because it is the samsara's nature.

while at the same time, we need to collect a lot of merits to before our time runs out.. and we will never know when our time runs out...

Tenzin Malgyur

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Re: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy
« Reply #18 on: April 27, 2014, 01:32:20 PM »
It is very sad to read of this tragic accident involving so many lives. Truly the words of The Lord Buddha is so true when he said that this world is full of sufferings and death can come anytime. I pray that those who lost their life in the sinking would be guided by the light of Buddha, surely it must be such a sudden and frightful death. May the parents and family members of those involved be comforted by Buddha's words too.
Even though the captain and his crew were arrested and to be charged, this incident will surely torment them mentally.
May those who are still missing also be guided by Buddha's light and be miraculously safe.

fruven

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Re: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy
« Reply #19 on: April 27, 2014, 02:36:56 PM »
This is a tragic accidents with so many lives lost. It is lesson for us who are still alive and living to urgently practice in this life. There is no greater than observing the incident that happens as something won't happen to us and thus we feel safe although we feel pity for those who have lost their loved ones. This is truly tragic because with or without accident we can die anytime anywhere. There is no hard and fast rule that one can die here or there peacefully.

icy

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Re: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy
« Reply #20 on: May 01, 2014, 11:27:25 PM »
It is heartwarming to read this article where many people from all walks of life came together to help in many different ways to those families who are mourning in this ferry tragedy. 

Volunteers quietly help families of SKorean ferry's lost in manifold ways, from cabs to kebabs.
 
 
BY HYUNG-JIN KIM AND JUNG-YOON CHOI, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS APRIL 28, 2014
 

JINDO, South Korea - The mother, slightly drunk, sits on the edge of a windblown dock and wails. A Buddhist monk approaches and wipes the tears from her face as she pours out her grief and longing for her missing son. He leads her away from the dock's edge and, as she weeps, chants Buddhist scriptures and sounds a wooden gong in a prayer for her son's return.

"They are really suffering," said the monk, Bul Il, who came from the southeastern port city of Busan to help the families of the more than 100 still missing in the sunken South Korean ferry. "It's painful for me to watch their misery," he said, his face peeling and red from long chants on a platform facing the sea.

Bul Il is one member of an impromptu city that has sprung up at this normally sleepy port for the families of those lost in the disaster. The city runs on the kindness of strangers.

A sense of national mourning over a tragedy that will likely result in more than 300 deaths, most of them high school students, has prompted an outpouring of volunteers. More than 16,000 people — about half the island's normal population — have come to help.

They handle much of the care that relatives of the missing receive in Jindo as they wait for divers to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones from the wreckage of the ferry Sewol.

Some scrub toilets and bathroom floors at the gym where families sleep, keeping the amenities practically spotless. A man walks with a huge sign that says "I will wash clothes for you."

They cook huge pots of hot kimchi soup, distribute blankets, towels and toiletries, pick up trash and sweep the grounds. Turkish volunteers offer kebabs, turning on spits. One truck distributes homemade tofu, another pizza.

Cab drivers from Ansan, where the high school students who make up more than 80 per cent of the missing and dead were from, provide free rides to and from Jindo, a five-hour drive that would normally run up a fare of 280,000 won ($270).

"It's time to help those who are mourning. Giving up several days of work is nothing," driver Ahn Dae-soo said.

Lim Jang-young, a 58-year-old owner of a Japanese restaurant, came to Jindo from the southern city of Daejeon to cook traditional beef soup for family members, other volunteers and journalists. He temporarily closed his restaurant to come help because he said he can't focus on his business while he worries about the victims and their families.

A man who was eating his soup "showed me a picture of a girl, his daughter, and started crying. I couldn't resist crying with him," said Lim, a father of three.

Hundreds of people, many from aid groups, private companies, churches and other organizations, mostly wearing green and blue clothing, pack roads lined with white tents near Paengmok port and a gym on the island, offering soup, kimchi, rice, hamburgers, taxi services, cellphone battery charging, laundry services, medicine, energy drinks, psychiatric help and daily necessities like underwear, socks, nail clippers, cotton swabs and toothbrushes.

Park Seung-ki, a spokesman for the government task force, said Sunday that more than 16,200 people have come on their own or with nearly 730 organizations. About 690,000 aid items such as food, bottled water, blankets and clothes have also arrived in Jindo since the sinking, Park said.

Volunteers say they're asked to refrain from "provoking" family members and to avoid smiling, taking commemorative photos or starting conversations. Volunteers are also asked to be patient even if victims' relatives become angry, according to a civic organization tasked with handling volunteers.

Lee Sung-tae, secretary general for the civic organization, says people 23 or younger are often not allowed to volunteer because of worries they may remind family members, mostly parents of missing high school students, of their own children. Older volunteers who happen to look young are given work that keeps them away from the families of the missing students. Lee said his organization is now asking groups to stay away because there are already too many volunteers.

Kim Byung-jo, 52, and Kim Yong-su, 46, drove 2 1/2 hours from the southern city of Suncheon to clean toilets and shower rooms at a gym where the families, both men and women, sleep on mattresses under bright fluorescent lights.

"It's totally different from when I watched this on TV," said Kim Yong-su, a trailer driver. "I've become really solemn. I can't really express how I'm feeling."

There is a makeshift chapel and a makeshift Buddhist temple.

Donated materials in the gymnasium — peach and pink blankets, bright green jackets and blue vests — add colour to the scene, but it is still a place awash in grief and frustration.

Exhausted relatives sit with shell-shocked expressions, staring blankly at the ever growing list of bodies. In tents near the port, they sit on blankets and mattresses, watching TV news programs about search efforts. They eat at long tables and benches under tents in near total silence. The gymnasium holds hundreds of people but is mostly as quiet as a library. Sometimes there are howls of anger when a government official visits or cries of agony when a family identifies a body.

It does not matter to the volunteers that the families do not brim with gratefulness for their work. They want to do more to ease their pain.

Ahn, the cab driver, said the word "heavy-hearted" is not enough to describe what it's like to drive home parents who have just identified their child's body.

"In the five hours of driving there's a complete silence," he said. "Who can say anything in that situation?"

A well-known psychiatrist, Jung Hye-shin, came to Jindo to help counsel families, though she told her nearly 150,000 followers on Twitter that she hasn't talked to any because they're not ready for counselling. But she observed the volunteers in Jindo.

"The Catholic undertaker volunteers were wiping the fingers and toes of the kids, ever so gently and carefully, as if they were bathing a baby," she tweeted of the work to clean corpses. "In the end, the kids became pretty again. I'm glad they met adults that they could be thankful to before leaving this world."

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angelsherfield

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Re: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy
« Reply #21 on: May 02, 2014, 02:20:04 AM »
Since the airplane MH370 incident happened, followed by South Korea ferry tragedy and it continuous with other air planes issue even though it is able to avoid from any tragedy happened. Even myself also starts fobia with airplane travelling. Can't really sleep but to continuous pray along the journey. When the flight is not stable due to bad weather, the plane start up and down and you would start fear and think about recent tragedy happened.

When reading through the news about the ferry passengers leaving time to time text messages for family, it hits me real hard. You can really understand how the family especially parents feel. Heart pain and seeing the young one leaving them.

Pray for those leaving one having a good rebirth. Pray for MH370 crew and passengers be found and safe. 

eyesoftara

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Re: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy
« Reply #22 on: May 10, 2014, 03:31:40 AM »
it very sad to hear so many tragedies and disasters. In this degenerate age, humans' self-centredness has caused global warming, disasters, tragedies and outright sufferings. Global warming caused changes in weather patterns, and tsunami, floods and droughts. Human greed causes this particular ferry to keel over and sink, killing hundreds of people.

I pray for the people who caused this tragedy and for the victims. Om Mani Peme Hum! 

pinecone

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Re: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy
« Reply #23 on: June 17, 2014, 12:35:01 PM »
It is so sad to hear of tragedies around the world i.e. wars,  earthquakes, plane crash, land slide, road accidents etc and the most recent heart wrenching one, the sinking of the South Korean’s ferry.  What have this young and innocent teenagers done to be ended up in such a disastrous death? Life is indeed so unpredictable and fragile! We really have no idea when our day will come ? Thus, we have to constantly remind our self to do virtues to make our life meaningful . May all  perished have a good and swift rebirth.

icy

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Re: Pray For South Koreans in Ferry Tragedy
« Reply #24 on: July 23, 2014, 10:36:16 AM »
In this Ferry disaster in South Koreo, we saw tragedies connected to this disaster, the indiction of 4 ferry crew for homicide, the resignation of South Korean Prime Minister, the vice-principal of South Korea school committed suicide and now the death of the billionaire ferry owner.  OM MANI PADME HUNG.........


South Korean school girl Cho A-reum, far right, whose brother is one of the missing passengers onboard the ferry, looks at the sea as a Buddhist monk prays for missing passengers in Jindo in April. Picture: REUTERS


Body of fugitive ferry owner identified
BY SAM KIM, JULY 23 2014, 05:19

SEOUL — A tycoon and religious sect leader identified as the de facto owner of the South Korean ferry that sank in April, killing more than 300 people, has been found dead, police said on Tuesday.

The body of Yoo Byung Eun, 73, on the run since the disaster, was discovered in a field of plum trees in the southwestern city of Suncheon on June 12 and his identity was recently confirmed through DNA and fingerprint analysis, Woo Hyung Ho, chief of Suncheon Police Station, said at a televised briefing. The finding ended a months-long manhunt.

"The body was too decomposed to provide a hint at the cause of death," Mr Woo said. "So far there has been no evidence suggesting homicide."

Prosecutors blame Yoo for a lack of safety training and investment that could have prevented the April 16 sinking. The tragedy fuelled public anger across the country that brought President Park Geun Hye’s popularity to a record low.

Yoo and his family controlled Chonghaejin Marine, operator of the Sewol ferry, through a church group at the centre of a network of about 70 companies, authorities say. Prosecutors have indicted Chonghaejin executives with 15 crew members who escaped the ferry without evacuating passengers, most of whom were high school students on an excursion. Mr Park said the actions of the crew were "like murder".

Only 172 of the 476 people aboard the Sewol were rescued. Divers are still searching for 10 bodies after retrieving 294 from the ferry that capsized off the southwestern coast.

Bloomberg