The government’s announcement of compensation for victims of the Sewol ferry disaster last April that claimed the lives more than 300 people has earned the ire of the victims’ families.

In a statement released April 2, representatives of the victim’s families said a thorough investigation of the deadly accident and a decision to bring up the ship should be made first before compensation can be discussed.

The first anniversary of the accident that the nation witnessed live on television is just around the corner ― April 16. A year has passed, but the pain is still very raw for the families who watched helpless as the ship went down, taking their loved ones with it. Survivors still suffer from the trauma of that day and struggle with day-to-day living.

For the victims’ families and survivors, a resolution to their nightmare may be possible with a full understanding of what happened that day ― why the ship sank and why the Coast Guard was unable to rescue any passengers from inside the sinking ship. Yet a year after the accident, we still do not have a full and clear picture of what took place.

In announcing the compensation ― about 820 million won for the Danwon High School students who were on a school trip, 1.14 billion won for the school’s teachers, and varying amounts to other individual passengers ― the government appears to be trying to quiet the families’ demand for a full accounting of the Sewol tragedy. The government may have calculated that if the families rejected the compensation, as representatives did Thursday, then it would look as though they wanted more compensation, exploiting the situation to milk more money from the government. If this is what the government had intended, it is depraved.

The compensation may sound like it is costing taxpayers a lot of money, but a look at the breakdown of the package of compensation reveals otherwise.

Of the 820 million won that will be given to each high school student, 300 million won would come from money that was raised by the Community Chest of Korea and other funds ― a total of 128.8 billion won was raised ― and 100 million won from traveler’s insurance taken out by the school. The remaining 420 million won is based on 300 million won in expected income had the victim worked until the legal retirement age. The other 100 million won in compensation was calculated according to the law concerning compensation for traffic and industrial accidents.

The government has been less than forthcoming in responding to the bereaved families’ demand to know the truth. Critics accuse the government of being uncooperative, undermining efforts to conduct a broad investigation into the incident. Such obstructions are exemplified by the enforcement ordinance for the special law on Sewol promulgated late last month. The enforcement ordinance makes a mockery of the special law by stipulating that civil servants from the Oceans and Fisheries Ministry, the very ministry that is the subject of the investigations, control the special committee on the Sewol investigation.

Pope Francis, meeting with a group of priests visiting from Korea last month, asked how the Sewol tragedy was being handled. While there are those eager to erase the incident from the nation’s memory, Pope Francis, who expressed sympathy and support for the families of Sewol victims during his papal visit last year, remembered.

We should all remember what happened so that similar tragedies are not repeated. A full investigation into the Sewol disaster is one way of doing that.