On the streets of Seoul’s central Gwanghwamun Square on Friday, Koreans gathered in remembrance of the pandemic’s victims.

People grieving lost loved ones opened up and shared their stories in one of the capital city’s busiest districts during the afternoon rush hour, and the crowd grew larger as more people passing by stopped to listen. It was one of the first such events to take place in public.

COVID-19 has kept patients cut off from visits at hospitals up to their final moments, depriving the people they left behind of a goodbye.

A daughter spoke of the closure she was denied with her father, a retiree who would drive her to and from work so that she could avoid crowded subway cars and buses. He wanted to make sure she was safe during the outbreak. When he came down with the virus last year, he assured her he would be OK. However, he never returned home. She said she thinks about the one late-night phone call she couldn’t take. That would have been the last time she could have spoken to him.

A mother and father spoke of searching the house for traces of their son, who was still in high school when he died two years ago. From a diary entry they retrieved the memories of his baby days. He wasn’t a confirmed case, but he was treated as one because he had suspected symptoms. For days they slept in their car outside the hospital because they were barred from seeing him.

Another recounting was of a man who died en route to getting a PCR test earlier this year. He was a wheelchair user, and it was after testing became restricted to older people aged 60 and up. People with disabilities were not considered a testing priority. Emergency medics found him unresponsive on the street, and he tested positive postmortem. Because his family members also tested positive, they couldn’t be at his funeral.

Then there were front-line workers who witnessed patients die alone in the agony of separation. “Sometimes I feel like a monster,” said one intensive care unit worker.

“A staple comment in daily briefings is that the health care system is running smoothly, like everything is being taken care of. But there’s nothing normal about 300 people dying each day,” said public interest lawyer Park Han-hee.

“Today we remember actual human beings, who are being forgotten behind the numbers.”

By Kim Arin (arin@heraldcorp.com)