The ferry Sewol capsized and sank near Jindo, South Korea, on 16 April 2014 while travelling from Incheon to Jeju. Of the 304 people who died, most were secondary-school pupils on an excursion. Failures in loading, regulation, crew conduct and emergency response produced prolonged national anger and grief.

Korean poets published elegies and collective memorial volumes addressing the lost pupils, bereaved families and failures of authority. Sewol became a defining contemporary poetic symbol of interrupted youth, public responsibility and the demand that national grief must not be forgotten.