ABSTRACT
In 2014, South Korea experienced the Sewol ferry disaster which took the lives of 304 passengers—most of them high school students on a field trip. What followed the innocent deaths was a massive spread of disinformation. This chapter explores the ways in which the government concealed and distorted the nature of the incident by instrumentalising the mainstream media. Observing governmental policies and media discourse that were closely intertwined with each other, this article analyses the authorities’ strategies in two ways: state-led conspiracy theories and the logic of neoliberalism. By doing so, this chapter demonstrates how the state gave citizens an artful injunction to obliterate the memory of the national tragedy, letting it sink into oblivion.
