UNESCO adds Sewol ferry archive to Asia-Pacific heritage list

Two South Korean entries, including an archive on the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking, were added to a UNESCO regional heritage list on Thursday, South Korea's national news agency Yonhap reported.

The Danwon High School 4.16 Archive, titled 'Records of Citizens' Memory and Healing Movements,' was granted inscription at a general meeting of the UNESCO Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific in Jakarta.

The archive contains 235,220 records related to the April 16, 2014, disaster, when the ferry sank en route to the resort island of Jeju, killing 304 passengers.

Danwon High School in Ansan, south of Seoul, suffered some of the heaviest losses, with 250 of 325 students who were aboard the ferry on a school trip killed.

The records include a calendar for April 2014 collected from a school classroom, along with documents detailing the recovery of bereaved families and survivors.

The Korea Heritage Service said the archive captures the wounds of individuals, families and communities, as well as their efforts to recover.

Kim Soon-gil, the mother of student victim Jin Yoon-hee, said she hopes the archive goes beyond the inscription and teaches future generations about the sinking.

A second South Korean submission, 'Suunjapbang and Eumsikdimibang: Community Archives of Traditional Korean Culinary Knowledge,' was also added to the list.

With the latest additions, South Korea now has eight inscriptions on the regional list, which includes a set of traditional wooden plaques and 'Maninso,' a collection of 10,000 people's petitions.

Countries may submit three applications every two years for review for the Asia-Pacific list.

The UNESCO Memory of the World program seeks to preserve documents and records considered important to human history, and its regional committees oversee nominations within their areas.