Ten years after South Korean ferry disaster, mothers express their grief on stage

ANSAN, South Korea — For Lee Mi-kyung, whose son was one of the 250 children who died in South Korea's Sewol ferry disaster 10 years ago, coping with the grief and anger has been incredibly hard. She works through her pain on stage.

"I will no longer hide in darkness, nor be defeated by sorrow, nor cry in despair," Lee, 58, declares in a play in which seven mothers of children who died in the tragedy portray their journey of mourning.

The play is one of five that Lee and other mothers have performed over the past eight years, each highlighting a different aspect of the tragedy.

Through the plays, they remember their children, mourn and renew calls for justice and answers as to how so many children — who were told to stay in the ship's cabins — died while the captain and crew escaped.

The 6,800-ton Sewol ferry sank on April 16, 2014, with 476 passengers and crew on board and 304 died, most of them high school children on an excursion to Jeju island.

The scenes of the vessel sinking on live TV stunned the country and outrage has not abated over time.

The ship's structure had been illegally modified and it was overloaded. Safety regulations were ignored and the vessel's speed and heavy load caused it to capsize. Rescuers were slow to reach the ship and were largely ineffective when they got there.

The captain is serving a life sentence and other members of the crew are also in jail. But no other people have been found accountable. There have been a number of investigations and enquiries into the disaster but the mothers say none have provided the answers they are seeking.

Lee says she spends a lot of time grieving for her son, Young-man, who was 17 when he died. She finds herself standing on the road where she saw him off