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Ansan High School the focus of South Korean ferry disaster

One South Korean school bore the brunt of the Sewol ferry disaster, Danwon High School in Ansan, an industrial town near the capital, Seoul. On board were 339 pupils and teachers. Very few survived. Even though it is a huge school it had no room big enough to cope with the scale of the tragedy, so Ansan’s Olympic Memorial hall has been turned into a shrine for the victims. The community is not only mourning the victims of the shipwreck, as the school’s deputy headmaster survived the disaster only to hang himself just afterwards, unable to live with the memories of what he had gone through, and blaming himself. “It’s really terrible. There are so many student victims. I cannot describe in words just how bad I feel,” said one male mourner. Many of the victims might have survived had they not been such obedient pupils, as teachers and crew told them to sit tight rather than risk their lives in the stormy conditions.