Mother of the late actor Lee Ji Han, “I ironed his clothes before he went to Itaewon. All the people there could have been saved” (BBC Korea)
The mother of the late actor Lee Ji Han expressed her painful feelings after losing her son.
On November 14th, a video titled “The reason the families of Itaewon disaster victims broke the silence” was uploaded on the Youtube channel “BBC Korea News”.
In the video, the late Lee Ji Han’s mother shed tears and said, “I still can’t believe it. I’m worried that my son is sleeping in a cold room, so I keep the lights on and turn on the boiler. I even hear things like my son’s voice calling ‘mom’. Since he was a baby, he had written in his diary that he was a nice kid”.
The late Lee Ji Han died at the age of 25. With a trembling voice, his mother said, “The police called me and asked, ‘Are you Lee Ji Han’s parents?’. I rushed to the hospital after receiving the call from the emergency room. Arriving there, I saw my son lying on the emergency room bed and he was not breathing”.
She continued, “It was until they put him in the cold freezer that I heard the news of 157 precious lives were killed in the disaster. ‘Mom, I’ll be home after having a meal in Itaewon’, he said to me. I ironed his white shirt and black pants and even tied his shoelaces with my own hands until the last minute before he left home.”
Lee Ji Han’s mother angrily said, “My child died at 12:30 p.m on October 30th. The time he asked for rescue was 6:34 p.m on October 29th. Why didn’t I go out there when I heard his voice on the phone? How many children left this world because they couldn’t cope with the situation for hours? They could have saved them all. I’m sure that no one could have died”.
She also said, “If there had been the son of the Prime Minister or the Minster of Security and Public Administration, would they have ignored 112 reports like that? Lots of people would have been dispatched there. They would have tried to save the kids somehow. And I wouldn’t have missed that 6:34 time.”
Revealing that she read the diary her son wrote when he was 3 years old, Lee Ji Han’s mother said, “He had been so nice since he was young, so I gave him a nickname, ‘Hyoja’ (good son). My child couldn’t drink alcohol because I would have hives all over my body. I also found out that he became Santa and visited children to do volunteer work. My son was very nice, and that’s why I’m so angry. I wish he wouldn’t have been so nice like that”.
She continued, “Neither the children of office workers nor the children of market merchants think the weight of their lives is different. But should we be ignored because we don’t have names or statuses? Are the police investigating the police? How can a sibling investigate his brother or a father investigate his son? Do you think this investigation will be done properly?”
Lastly, she said, “I want to show my gratitude to the police officers and firefighters who ran to the accident scene on bare feet. Why do you only mess up with the people below you? I think the president should ask the prosecution to thoroughly investigate everything and everyone, from the Minster of Security and Public Administration to the Prime Minister, and make them take responsibility for their crime.”
Source: Nate
