Field note #2. Death and mourning at GuUi Station

I visited GuUi (Gu-ŭi, pronounced as Goo-yi) Station to pay respect and took a few photos. I happened to drop by when it wasn’t so crowded, but apparently lots of people have been visiting to pay respect and keeping vigil at a makeshift shrine both on the platform upstairs (it’s an open-air elevated platform, not underground) and downstairs at the station entrance.

Mourning at GuUi Station. May 31, 2016.

A photo posted by @dotorious on May 31, 2016 at 12:56am PDT

Mourning at GuUi Station. May 31, 2016.

A photo posted by @dotorious on May 31, 2016 at 12:57am PDT

Mourning at GuUi Station. May 31, 2016.

A photo posted by @dotorious on May 31, 2016 at 1:05am PDT

In addition to the post-it notes that have recently become common in these public shrines and the customary, funerary long-stemmed white chrysanthemums, people have been leaving birthday cakes (Mr. Kim died the day before his 20th birthday), instant cup noodles, snacks and other fast food—it was reported that he had an instant cup noodle in his bag because he rarely had time to eat on the job. Some of the notes also referred to this, e.g. “Hope you get to eat meat, not instant noodles where you are.” Some of my friends have been critical of this public dwelling on his youth and precarity, and the unspoken suggestion that perhaps the death of a young worker is somehow more deserving of public outrage and sympathy. But the cheap and portable (and terribly unhealthy!)instant cup noodles have long been seen as a symbol of precarity, poverty, and hard work.

Everyone knows that deaths, both sudden and long-time-coming, take place everywhere, all the time and every day, but this gruesome death has hit a particularly raw nerve in the public sphere, already grieving so many recent deaths. At a press conference held on May 31, the deceased Mr. Kim’s mother said that her son’s head was so horribly mutilated in the accident that she could not recognize her own son. She could identify his body only by the clothes he wore that day. She said that his screams must have sounded like the screeching brakes of the approaching train. I thought about this while I stood there watching and listening to the trains come and go over and over again, screeching and screaming in bone-chilling pitch.

Some travellers unknowingly exited from the very door of this horrific scene (Door 9-4) and were obviously taken aback to be stepping into a scene of public memorial, but for many, many others, this was just another spectacle that did not concern them. Whether indifferent or numb, they did not seem to hear the screams that filled the air.

Mourning at GuUi Station. May 31, 2016.

A photo posted by @dotorious on May 31, 2016 at 12:57am PDT

“How painful it must have been, how painful it must be.” The majority of the notes were written by young people, at least from what I saw there, but a few of these others caught my eye. I would guess that this first one is written by someone who is not as accustomed to conventions of punctuation and spelling, whether by age, class, or education (or all of the above). See even the clumsy way the three hearts at the end are drawn.

Mourning at GuUi Station. May 31, 2016.

A photo posted by @dotorious on May 31, 2016 at 1:01am PDT

“Tears in my eyes.” This one is also written from a parental perspective, mourning the death of someone who could be their son.

Mourning at GuUi Station. May 31, 2016.

A photo posted by @dotorious on May 31, 2016 at 12:58am PDT

“Son! I love you! Son! I am sorry!” The sign-off as a “passenger who used this train station everyday” underscores this extraordinary death as part of the ordinary everyday death.

Mourning at GuUi Station. May 31, 2016.

A photo posted by @dotorious on May 31, 2016 at 12:59am PDT

And finally, lots of connections to the Sewol Ferry disaster. Mr. Kim was born in 1997, the same year as that most of the Danwon High School students who were killed on the Sewol Ferry. There is compelling public sentiment that they in fact belong to 세월호 세대 or the “Sewol Generation” — overworked, precarious, abandoned.

Mourning at GuUi Station. May 31, 2016.

A photo posted by @dotorious on May 31, 2016 at 1:02am PDT