Hand-knit roses from a Japanese lady

“This is a heartache even for me, how much more so for you.”

A special letter arrived on July 3 to the Sewol victims’ family committee in the city of Ansan in Gyeonggi Province. They are 250 hand-written letters from an elderly anonymous Japanese woman living in Hiroshima, Japan. She said she is 70 years old. On the letters were clearly written Korean script, which she had enlisted the help of someone who knows Korean to write, saying that she wanted to lessen some of the sadness and hold the bereaved families’ hands to help them recover from the sorrow. Pictures by a 13-year-old girl “Masami” adorn the fringes of the writing. The 250 letters, which consist of one-page letter with identical content, were carefully wrapped with transparent vinyl with 250 colorful handmade rose-shaped dish cloths.

According to the Foreign Ministry’s notice contained in a box, this elderly lady submitted these boxes to the Korean consulate in Hiroshima on June 16. Her identity was not known. The letters that arrived at the victims` family committee in Korea are being delivered sequentially to the bereaved families. A ministry official said this senior citizen and her collaborators empathize with the pain of the Sewol ferry sinking victims and delivered the letters in hopes they will recover from the sorrow. The victims` families who got the letters and gifts said they are grateful that even people in a foreign country sent gifts to the families who suffered losses.