I clearly remember the air in Seoul that day, what it felt like, what I was doing, when I first learned about the Sewol Ferry Disaster on April 16, 2014, and watched the live broadcast online. Maybe I remember it so vividly because I am an educator.
High school students from a small city called Ansan were on their way to Jeju Island for a school trip when the ferry began to sink. It was a situation where everyone could have been saved. But because of the careless and inadequate response from the captain and crew, only 75 students survived, and 250 students went down with the ship and lost their lives. Eleven teachers also died, some trying to save even one more student until the very end, others refusing to leave the frightened students they were protecting.
For months after the incident, I felt deeply depressed. Whenever I saw students waiting at bus stops, I would think about how the Danwon High School students should have been there too, laughing and chatting just like them. And every time, I found myself in tears.
Six years later, when “Spring Day” by BTS was released, my heart ached and my eyes filled with tears. At first, I didn’t connect the song directly to the Sewol Ferry disaster. But the emotion I felt may have come from the fact that the song speaks to those who are gone. Or maybe it was because just weeks before its release, I had visited the Sewol Ferry truth-seeking tents at Gwanghwamun Square. I had looked through the students’ photos and offered words of encouragement to parents who had been protesting for six years.
Whatever the reason, the song felt heavier when I listened to it. When I later watched the music video, I began to feel that many elements in its mise-en-scène pointed to the Sewol tragedy.
At the time, though, we couldn’t speak about it openly. The political climate in Korea made that difficult. When the accident happened in 2014, even though it occurred in the morning, former president Park Geun-hye appeared at an emergency meeting only late in the afternoon. She looked as if she had just woken up and asked baffling questions, such as why the students could not be saved if they were wearing life jackets.
That moment spread across the entire country. As public anger toward President Park grew, the far-right forces that controlled her conservative administration and the National Assembly, where the conservatives held the majority, rushed to wrap up the case. They sent in police to block memorial events and demonstrations by the victims’ families. Conservative newspapers such as Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, and Dong-A Ilbo (the three largest dailies in Korea. Much of the Korean media leans conservative, but Chosun Ilbo and JoongAng Ilbo are the worst, similar in tone to Fox News in the United States) published editorials suggesting it was time to stop talking about the tragedy and implying that the parents were protesting to seek more compensation. Public opinion began to turn.
What should have been a moment of shared grief and a search for truth became a political divide. People grew hesitant to even bring up Sewol. For entertainers, it became almost untouchable.
But BTS was one of the very few who broke that silence. There were stories that in 2014, they had visited the memorial altar in Ansan in the evening and left flowers. Then, when “Spring Day” was released on February 13, 2017, they spoke openly about their interest in the Sewol tragedy. In an interview with the media five days later on February 18, they explained that as citizens, they had struggled with the tragedy and wanted to share a message.
They also donated 100 million won to support the victims’ families. RM said he hoped the donation would go toward psychological counseling, adding that anyone who witnessed such a tragedy would feel the same. Jungkook was the same age as most of the students who died, and the other members were not far from that age either. It is not hard to imagine how deeply they felt it.
When asked about the song and the music video, they said they focused on expressing the song visually and wanted to leave the interpretation open.
That openness is what defines their work. BTS does not spell everything out. They show, and then step back. The symbols and metaphors are layered, and each viewer reads them in their own way. Their music does not stay inside a single meaning. It connects outward, drawing from novels, mythology, and art. As Roland Barthes once said, the author is no longer the final authority of a text but simply a visitor.
“Spring Day” feels the same. Its meaning depends on how we meet it. The song carries a deep sense of empathy for a world where good and evil exist side by side. At first, it feels warm. The British rock sound and the train-like rhythm of the drums are comforting. But underneath, there is a harder question, one that echoes Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. A city built on the suffering of a single child. A happiness that asks for a sacrifice. It is a question about the contradictions we live with.
As our amazing Italian ARMY Angela Polenti (https://x.com/ItalianARMY_BTS) has pointed out, the symbols in the music video add another layer. The clock in the laundry room reads 9:45, the same time the Sewol ferry ran aground. The “Do Not Forget” sticker on the washing machine echoes the words carried by the parents of the victims. The members themselves seem to stand as survivors, while the bags and clothes left on the train feel like the belongings of students who never returned. The yellow ribbon on the carousel also recalls the Sewol symbol.
When you listen to the lyrics again, lines like “your photos,” “It is winter all year here,” and “I exhale you and your aching cold,” begin to feel different. They call to mind the students who died in the cold waters off the southwestern coast. The use of “you” in the plural, rather than the singular, in the first verse, deepens that sense of loss. It is not one person. It is many. The repeated “I miss you” builds that longing step by step, and gives that feeling a kind of life, as if it cannot stay still.
At the same time, the song can reach beyond this one event. It can speak to those pushed to the margins, or to the way history is remembered and forgotten. That is where its strength lies. It is more than a pop song. It asks you to think.
Nonetheless, when you place “Spring Day” back into its time, it is hard not to see it as a tribute to the victims of the Sewol Ferry Disaster, even if that was never stated directly.
As of April 2026, “Spring Day” holds unmatched records on Melon, Korea’s largest music platform. It has the highest number of likes, the most streams, and the largest number of listeners. In 2024, it set another record by staying on the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly charts longer than any other song. Since its release in 2017, it has never left the charts.
At this point, it is more than just a popular song. It has become part of the culture, part of the time it came from.
And maybe that is the real reason it lasts. “Spring Day” keeps asking us to remember. It asks us to sit with what we would rather forget, and to face the contradictions in our society together.
My Lyric Translation (focused on preserving rhyme without losing the original meaning of the song written by RM and SUGA)
(Verse 1: RM, JK)
I miss you,
To say it out loud makes me miss you more.
Even as I look at your photos,
The longing remains at my core.
Time seems so cruel,
I resent the distance between us now.
To even catch a glimpse of your face
Has become a struggle I don’t know how.
It is winter all year here,
The frost arrives even in August.
My heart runs through time,
A lone passenger on a Snowpiercer train.
I want to hold your hand and go
To the other side of the earth,
To bring an end to this winter’s reign.
How much longing must fall like snow
Before that spring day finally dawns?
Friend.
(Pre-Chorus: Jimin, V)
Like a tiny speck of dust
Floating through the empty air,
If I were the falling snow,
If I were the flakes drifting there,
I could reach you just a little faster,
I could reach you right then and there.
(Chorus: JK, J-Hope, V)
Snowflakes fall from the sky,
Drifting further as they pass me by.
I miss you, I miss you,
How long must I wait,
How many more sleepless nights must I stay awake,
Until I finally see you?
Until we meet for both our sake?
(Post-Chorus: JK, J-Hope)
Past the end of this cold winter,
Until the spring returns to stay,
Until the flowers bloom again,
Please stay in that place a little longer.
Stay there.
(Verse 2: SUGA, Jimin)
Was it you who changed,
Or was it me?
I hate even the time that flows in this moment,
I suppose we’ve both changed;
That is just how it must be for everyone.
Yes, I resent you.
You left me behind,
Yet not a single day have I
Forgotten you in my mind.
Honestly, I miss you,
But I will erase you for now.
Because that hurts less
Than blaming you for your broken vow.
(Pr-Chorus 2: Jin, Jimin)
I exhale you and your aching cold,
Like white smoke, fading and thin.
Though I say I’ll erase you with my words,
In truth, I cannot let you go from within.
(Chorus: JK, J-Hope, V)
Snowflakes fall from the sky,
Drifting further as they pass me by.
I miss you, I miss you.
How long must I wait,
How many more sleepless nights must I stay awake,
Until I finally see you?
Until we meet?
(Bridge; V, JK, Jimin)
You know it all,
You’re my best friend.
The morning light will rise again.
For no darkness, and no season,
Can hold us in a grip without an end.
(Chorus 2: Jimin, J-Hope, JK, V)
The cherry blossoms are blooming,
This winter is finally reaching its close.
I miss you, I miss you.
If I wait just a little longer,
If I stay awake just a few more nights,
I’ll go to meet you.
I’ll come to bring you home.
(Outro: Jin, J-Hope)
Past the edge of this cold winter,
Until the spring returns to stay,
Until the flowers reach their bloom,
Please stay in that place a little longer.
Stay there.