Work to remove the Sewol altar in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square is underway on March 18, 2019. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Mar. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — The work to dismantle a memorial altar for the victims of the 2014 Sewol ferry accident kicked off at Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul on Monday, five years after the deadly disaster rocked the country.
The work was expected to take about four hours, Seoul city said.
At the scene, some bereaved family members took photos of the altar as it was dismantled, and others picketed calling for a continued probe into the accident.
The previous day, the group of the victims’ families moved the portraits of 289 victims from the altar, temporarily, to the underground library of the Seoul City Hall as the final site for them has yet to be decided upon.
Instead, a 79.98-square-meter facility, dubbed the Exhibition Space for Memory and Safety, will be newly set up on the place where the altar was located.
The facility is scheduled to open on April 12, four days ahead of the fifth anniversary of the tragic accident, in which the 6,800-ton Sewol ferry sank in waters off the country’s southwest coast, claiming the lives of 304 people, most of them high school students on a school excursion. Seoul city will manage the facility.
The altar, consisting of a dozen tents, was installed in July 2014, with the bereaved families calling for the government to precisely determine the causes of the accident.
(Yonhap)
