On the second anniversary of the Hableány cruise ship tragedy, the memorial to the victims of the accident was inaugurated yesterday in Budapest.
The names of all the victims of the accident were engraved on the monument erected at the site of the accident, at the Pest end of Margit Bridge - a The names are illuminated individually by a spotlight.
As a reminder, the Hableány cruise ship sank on May 29, 2019 in Budapest, near Margaret Bridge, after colliding with the Viking Sigyn hotel ship. 35 people traveled on Hableány, 33 South Korean tourists and the two-member Hungarian crew. Seven tourists were rescued, the bodies of 27 victims were found, and one South Korean passenger is still listed as missing.
At the commemoration, Cho Chong-mun, the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Korea, thanked the Hungarian government, the authorities, and the Hungarian people for doing everything they could to rescue and search for the victims. He also thanked many people for praying for the victims. The politician emphasized: it is particularly painful for the family members of the victims that they were not able to visit the scene of the tragedy in the recent period due to the pandemic.
Csö Csong Mun expressed his hope that the court proceedings initiated after the accident will bring reassurance to the relatives, and that after the end of the pandemic, on the third anniversary of the accident, those affected will be able to visit Budapest. He also said that they still consider it their task to find the victim of the tragedy, who has been treated as missing until now, in order to return him to his family.
In his speech, Levente Magyar, the parliamentary secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, believed that the common problem not only did not break, but deepened and matured the relationship between the Korean and Hungarian people into friendship.
He said: the whole of Hungary was shaken by the boat accident, during which 28 lives were swallowed by the foam of the Danube. In this regard, he drew attention to the fact that no such accident has occurred in Hungary since the beginning of time, despite the fact that hundreds of ships cross the Hungarian rivers every day. He called it particularly painful that the majority of the victims were Korean citizens who came to Hungary as guests.
He said: in this situation, "we feel the loss of the brotherly people of Korea as ours, their pain is our pain, their grief is our grief." Magyar Levente expressed his condolences to the relatives of the victims on behalf of the government.
Photo: MH/Róbert Hegedüs
