Heart-wrenching messages of fear, love and despair, sent by high school students from a sinking South Korean ferry added extra emotional weight on Thursday to a tragedy that has stunned the entire nation.
“Sending this in case I may not be able to say this again. Mom, I love you,” one student Shin Young-Jin said in a text to his mother that was widely circulated in the South Korean media. “Oh, I love you too son,” texted back his mother who was unaware at the time that her son was caught in a life and death struggle to escape the rapidly sinking vessel.