For many South Koreans, facing April 16 does not get any easier. The day brings back traumatic memories of watching on TV a giant passenger ferry sink slowly in a calm sea and realising a few hours later that what they had watched was the scene of nearly 300 being drowned to death.

It is even more difficult for victims’ grieving families, as they still search for the truth behind what caused the Sewol ferry to sink and why the government failed to save so many.

“Min-jung was a sweet girl who wanted to become a pharmacist – and she studied hard in school for her dream,” Chung Ki-yeop, 51, an uncle of the student victim Kim Min-jung, told The Korea Herald in front of a joint altar in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province.

“Anyone who wasn’t at the site of the accident cannot understand the helplessness and pain. I could not do anything but watch a loved one drown,” he said.

Sewol, a 6,800-ton passenger ferry, was carrying 476 passengers – mostly high school students on a field trip – when it sank off a southwestern island on April 16, 2014. Just 172 passengers were rescued. Nine are still missing.

April is once again marked with apologies and promises not to forget those who died in the Sewol ferry tragedy and to find the truth behind the man-made disaster to prevent a recurrence.

This April, however, should be different, some mourners hoped.

“I hope it will be different this year,” said Lee Seon-ok, 46, in front of the joint altar at Gwanghwamun Square, one of several erected to mark the three-year anniversary of the disaster.

“The recovery of the ship is only the beginning of finding the truth behind the accident,” said Lee whose daughter is the same age as the student victims.

Hopes for a closure finally 

The anniversary this year comes amid growing hope that the country may be closer to some kind of a closure to the tragedy, with the salvage of the ill-fated ship from the seabed.

Sewol, which lay more than 40 meters below the waves for three years, was raised above water on March 23. Now moved to dry land at Mokpo Port, the hull is being secured and washed for the long-awaited search of its interior for the bodies of the nine still missing. The government is to announce the search plan Tuesday.

Many South Koreans hope that the soon-to-launch search and inspection process of the hull will be able to unearth the “whole truth” behind the sinking.

In 2014, state prosecutors concluded that a combination of overloaded freight, a displacement of cargo, an illegal redesign of the ferry and a sharp turn by unskilled helmsmen were the causes of the disaster.

But the results did not answer questions over why the authorities failed to rescue passengers in the early hours of the rescue operations and who should be held accountable for the deaths of 304 people.

Many believe ousted President Park Geun-hye was part of the reason behind the botched rescue efforts and that her administration tried to cover it up. Mishandling of the Sewol disaster was one of the charges brought against the conservative leader when she was impeached by the parliament late last year. However, the Constitutional Court did not see it as an impeachable charge in its decision to finalise her removal from office in March.

“I hope that the deaths of 304 people will help make society safer,” said Oh Jin-geun, a 44-year-old office worker from Seoul who was among thousands who visited another joint altar for victims set up in Ansan, where memories of the student victims remain intact. Most of the victims were students from Danwon High School in Ansan.

“During the next government, the nine missing bodies should quickly be recovered and the causes behind the sinking should be revealed,” Oh said.

The altar had flowers, chocolates and other gifts such as books and soccer balls that showed the tarnished youth and dreams that once shone bright.

In the afternoon, some 7,000 people, including four of the five presidential hopefuls, gathered for the third annual memorial event held near the altar. Memorial songs were sung, poems were read and videos were played.

Just a few blocks away from there, “memory classrooms,” a scale replica of the actual classrooms at Danwon High School, also received visitors. The classrooms were relocated to the Ansan Education Office last May.

Visitors browsed through handwritten letters and left messages and gifts on the desks that have been preserved in memory of the 250 students killed in the sinking. Outside the classrooms, an estimated 1,000 people marched some 5 kilometers across the city toward the joint altar, carrying yellow balloons and flowers to commemorate the victims.

“The Sewol ferry incident symbolises the rotten part of South Korean society,” said Kim Yoo-na, a 32-year-old participant from Daegu. “The problem with it is that the authorities gave permission ‘to fix’ a secondhand ship to be reused to transport people — it’s disgusting and those rotten parts should be cut out.”

On Jindo, near the site of the accident, some 1,000 mourners gathered for a memorial event to commemorate the third anniversary of the disaster and to support families of the nine victims that remain unaccounted for.

Mourners also visited Mokpo, where the raised ferry is sitting and bereaved families are still waiting for the remains of their children to return.

A day earlier, an estimated 100,000 people packed into Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul to join the nation’s biggest memorial event, with hundreds of people waiting in a line 1 kilometer long to pay tribute to the victims at the joint altar.

“The reason I see hope out of this disaster is the raised awareness among the young generation. They learned that they should not just stand still as they are told,” said teacher Son Chae-eun, who has been collecting signatures for a petition for a probe into the ferry disaster for the past three years at the square.

“I dream of a safer, better society in which students don’t have to lose their dream.”

As dusk fell, candles began to be lit, with participants watching musical performances, speeches by the grieving families and a survivor, and video clips showing the three-year-long fight for the “truth.”

Shedding tears and also sharing smiles, they in unison vowed to stand in solidarity with the bereaved families until the nine missing bodies are recovered and those responsible for the disaster are punished.

Former President Park, who is now in prosecution’s custody, is widely expected to be indicted Monday for corruption, joining a handful of her former aides and confidante who are standing trial.

The Sewol ferry’s captain, who was among the first to abandon the ship without giving an evacuation order, was sentenced to life in prison. The court handed down a 12-year jail term to three ranking sailors and a seven-year prison term to the CEO of the shipping operator. A maritime police official in charge of the on-site rescue operation was sentenced to three years in prison.

The ‘Yes’ campaign had won 55.5 percent of the vote while the ‘No’ campaign had mustered 44.5 percent, the election commission said in figures quoted by state news agency Anadolu, in an initial count based on 65 percent of the ballot boxes.

The result could still change as more ballot boxes are counted across the hugely diverse country. The ‘No’ share of the vote was climbing as more ballots were counted, after lagging well behind in the early count, in a nail-biting end to the campaign.

For the changes to be implemented, the ‘Yes’ camp needs to win 50 percent plus one vote.

More than 55.3 million Turks were eligible to cast ballots on sweeping changes to the president’s role which, if approved, would grant Erdogan more power than any leader since modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his successor Ismet Inonu.

Voting in Istanbul with his family, Erdogan predicted that “our people would walk to the future” by making the right choice.

After a stamina-busting campaign that saw insults flung in both directions, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said: “Whatever choice comes out on top, our nation will make the most beautiful decision.”

Yildirim was later due to address supporters from the headquarters of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara while Erdogan was due to watch the results in Istanbul.

Initial patterns showed that the Aegean and Mediterranean coastal regions and Kurdish-dominated southeast had backed the ‘No’ camp.

But the ‘Yes’ vote had held up in Erdogan’s Anatolian heartland and — crucially — was ahead in Turkey’s biggest cities of Istanbul and Ankara.

‘Vote for destiny’

The opposition has cried foul that the referendum has been conducted on unfair terms, with ‘Yes’ posters ubiquitous on the streets and opposition voices squeezed from the media.

The poll is also taking place under a state of emergency that has seen 47,000 people arrested in an unprecedented crackdown after the failed putsch of July last year.

“We are voting for Turkey’s destiny,” said the standard-bearer of the ‘No’ camp, Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

The co-leaders of Turkey’s second largest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, have been jailed on charges of links to Kurdish militants in what the party says is a deliberate move to eliminate them from the campaign.

Closely watched on Monday will be the initial assessment of the international observer mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

Three people were killed in a shootout in the garden of a school used as a polling station in the southeastern Diyarbakir region, the Dogan news agency said, but it was not clear if the fighting was linked to the election or simply a family feud.

If passed, the new presidential system would dispense with the office of prime minister and centralise the entire executive bureaucracy under the president, giving Erdogan the direct power to appoint ministers.

The system would come into force after the elections in November 2019. Erdogan, who became president in 2014 after serving as premier from 2003, could then seek two more five-year terms.

Supporters see the new system as an essential modernisation step for Turkey that will remove the risk of the political chaos that blighted the 1990s and is blamed for the 2000-2001 financial crisis.

Opponents fear it risks granting Erdogan authoritarian powers and allow him to ride roughshod over key institutions like the judiciary and parliament.

In the Kurdish-majority southeastern province of Diyarbakir, self-employed Nihat Aslanbay said he voted against the reforms.

“A one man regime will not bring any benefits to this country,” he said.

But in Istanbul, voter Emrah Yerlinkaya said he voted ‘Yes’ “to support” Erdogan. “If we are here today, it is thanks to him. I also voted because I support the constitutional reform.”

‘Drastic shake-up’

Beyond changing the government system, the vote could also have even wider implications for Turkey which joined NATO in 1952 and for the last half-century has set its sights on joining the European Union.

Erdogan has warned Brussels that in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote he would sign any bill agreed by parliament to reinstate capital punishment, a move that would automatically end its EU bid.

Western reactions to the referendum outcome will be crucial after Erdogan accused Turkey’s allies of failing to show sufficient solidarity in the wake of the July 15 failed coup.

Sinan Ekim and Kemal Kirisci of the Brookings Institution think-tank said in a report the changes if agreed “would set in motion the most drastic shake-up of the country’s politics and system of governance in its 94-year-long history”.

“Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!” the president tweeted Sunday morning.

That message came about an hour after an earlier tweet when he appeared to suggest the matter was a non-issue.

Trump has previously said Americans don’t care about his returns.

“I did what was almost an impossible thing to do for a Republican-easily won the Electoral College! Now Tax Returns are brought up again?” Trump tweeted.

His messages came after thousands of protesters gathered Saturday in cities across America to pressure Trump to release his tax returns, a move of transparency he has repeatedly rejected.

The demonstrations were timed to coincide with the traditional April 15 deadline for annual tax filings, a key date on the calendar for US households, and resulted in dozens of arrests.

For decades, US presidents and presidential candidates have released their returns voluntarily, although there is no legal obligation to do so.

US law requires only the publication of a financial statement that estimates assets, including debt and revenue, but does not give details on the amount of taxes paid.

Trump, a billionaire property tycoon, released a financial statement but has kept his tax returns private, both during the election campaign and since taking office in January.

He argues that he cannot release them because he is being audited. But tax officials have said he can in fact release them if he so wishes.

Trump has on at least two previous occasions accused demonstrators of being paid to protest against him.

“Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he wrote on February 3 during protests against his executive order on immigration.

The first woman in a decade to top the lineup at the premier music event, Lady Gaga unleashed an action-packed spectacle of acrobatic choreography that culminated in confetti, fireballs and fireworks on her dance anthem “Bad Romance.”

Gaga seized upon the spotlight to introduce a new song, “The Cure,” that is built off an unadorned R&B rhythm before rising into a pop chorus with the lines, “If I can’t find the cure, I’ll fix you with my love.”

She released the song commercially as she left Coachella in the California desert, marking her first new music since her latest album “Joanne” came out in October.

Coachella offered a preview of the global tour the pop superstar will launch in August for “Joanne,” an album that brought a more classic pop and even country sound to the 31-year-old artist long associated with synthpop.

Gaga made clear at Coachella that her old spirit remained undiminished. On “John Wayne,” one of her most country-driven songs in which she admits an attraction to rugged masculinity, Gaga paradoxically sang astride a human pyramid of her sweaty, topless and ethnically diverse crew of male dancers.

Sensuality oozed throughout Gaga’s set. She beckoned one dancer by grabbing his jeans in the waist, as both male and female dancers rubbed her leotard-clad body seductively.

“Have you all found someone you want to sleep with yet?” she teasingly asked the 100,000-strong crowd, most of them young and many of them clad only in the bare minimum of clothing after a long day in the sun.

Yet for a singer once talked about as much for her outrageous outfits as her songs, she stepped back and put the emphasis on her music — giving herself space to show off her glowing, rich voice on tracks such as “The Edge of Glory.”

Her biggest fashion message may have come as she played piano. She struggled to take off her sweater mid-song, in an endearing display of authenticity.

Surprise guests

Lady Gaga played her first Coachella after original headliner Beyonce canceled on doctors’ orders as she expects twins.

One of the most lucrative events on the global cultural calendar, Coachella takes place over back-to-back three-day weekends with identical lineups.

In a Coachella hallmark, Saturday saw a slew of surprise performers — delighting fans who avidly posted to social media.

The rapper Future, who recently made history with back-to-back albums debuting at number one on the US chart, drew cheers when he brought to stage Migos, the Atlanta trio behind the hit “Bad and Boujee.”

But an even bigger name soon came on — rap superstar Drake, a sometime collaborator with Future, who turned the crowd into a sea of waving arms as he performed his hit “Fake Love.”

Migos then crossed the lawn to make a cameo with DJ Snake, the successful but largely behind-the-scenes force behind mega-hits such as “Lean On.”

The French DJ pulled off a second surprise as Lauryn Hill walked on, singing the Fugees emblematic song “Killing Me Softly.”

Non-Gaga fashion

Bon Iver, once a crowd favorite with indie folk tunes such as “Skinny Love,” brought to stage the band’s turn into deep experimentation in a set of loop effects and references to numerological riddles from its latest album, “22, A Million.”

Frontman Justin Vernon performed in headphones at a soundboard but by the end of the set brought the crowd into a frenzy as he knelt before his sound pedals and clamped aggressively onto his electric guitar’s bridge as abstract images flashed on screen.

While Lady Gaga toned down her outfits, one artist who embraced costumes was Roisin Murphy. The Irish trip-hop singer took the stage with her face covered by a mask made of interjoined dolls and later carried over her head a faceless, zebra-colored dummy.

If Coachella handed out fashion awards, one could also go to frontman Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest, the prolific indie rockers with a unique talent to work songs down to quiet and back up to intensity.

The 24-year-old Toledo, long pictured as a scraggly younger, donned a tight, sky-blue suit with a black shirt and necktie.