A day of mourning for the 304 victims of the Sewol ferry sinking was overtaken by acrimony today, as organisers called off a ceremony planned to mark its one-year anniversary to protest against the South Korean government's response to the disaster.
The main group representing bereaved families said the government had let them down again by failing to announce by the anniversary a decision to raise the ship in hopes of finding the bodies of nine victims still missing.
The group's leader also cited President Park Geun-hye's decision not to attend the memorial service as a reason for calling it off. Instead, Park visited the southwestern port of Jindo, which had served as a makeshift morgue when the ferry sank on April 16 a year ago.
"They are going to have to take responsibility," Yoo said.
Park was booed off by an angry crowd when he tried to visit the memorial altar in Ansan, home of Danwon High School, which lost 250 of its students on a class trip.
She said the government would begin preparing to raise the 6,800-tonne submerged ship, her clearest indication yet that the government would try to recover it. The families and political opponents have accused the government of dragging its feet.
In Ansan, a long line of mourners waited in the rain as an outdoor stage for the memorial and rows of chairs stood empty.
It was later found to have been structurally unsound and overloaded, and many of the children followed instructions to stay in their cabins as the crew scrambled to safety in what was widely criticised as a botched rescue operation.
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