Exactly four years ago, a tragic maritime accident happened in waters off the southwestern island of Jindo that took the lives of 304 people, including 248 secondary school students and teachers from Ansan Danwon High School. Time has passed since then, but the people of Korea have kept the promise that they won’t forget April 16, 2014. 



The phrase “Remember0416” quickly became the most trending word on Twitter Monday morning, as more than 275,000 tweets including the words were posted on the social media platform.

Many of the tweets showed pictures of Twitter users wearing a yellow ribbon, which was made to commemorate the Sewol ferry disaster. Some users held events to share the yellow ribbon badges that they made on their own, in a bid to call people’s attention to remember the day.

“I’ll give out this yellow badge to the one who shares this post,” a Twitter user said in a post with a hashtag “Remember0416.” The post was shared over 1,710 times in three hours.

#Remember0416 ??

알티추첨해서 한분께 노란고래 뱃지 하나 드리도록하겠습니다. 오늘내로 뽑고 알티만 해주세요.

사랑합니다 그리고 잊지않습니다?? pic.twitter.com/fB6Gqe2NZl

— 피피?? (@vh_x_x_o_) 2018년 4월 15일

“If you send a text to the number #1111, the message will appear on an electronic screen on a group memorial altar. The memorial altar is set to be pulled down after today, so please send messages!” another user said.

The words “Sewol Ferry,” “4th Anniversary of Sewol Disaster” and “Yellow Ribbon” also appeared on the trending bar on Naver. The search engine displayed the yellow ribbon button on the top of its main page, which automatically links the users to a message board. As of 10:20 a.m., over 886,000 users left a message on the board.

By Park Ju-young (jupark@heraldcorp.com)