Police chief Yoon Hee-keun said on Tuesday: “We judged that the response to emergency calls was insufficient,” noting the large number of calls made before the disaster. Announcing an independent investigation, Yun said: “We will thoroughly check the facts to see if we took appropriate actions after receiving emergency reports that informed us of the danger in advance.” Interior and Security Minister Lee Sang-min later told a parliamentary session: “I deeply apologize to the people to whom the recent accident happened, despite the fact that the state bears infinite responsibility for people’s safety.” The death toll from Saturday’s crowd crush during Halloween celebrations in Itaewon’s nightlife district rose to 156 on Tuesday. Belongings of the victims of the deadly Itaewon Halloween crash are displayed at a gym in Seoul, South Korea. Photo: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images A Buddhist ceremony was held at a funeral hall in Suwon on Tuesday for an office worker who died in one of South Korea’s worst post-war disasters. The victim’s mother and sister held hands and comforted each other while listening to voices and the sound of a wooden bell. The day before, students in school uniforms had come to pray for their fallen classmate. Among the dead was a high school student who had been participating in Halloween festivities with her mother and aunt. They caught the wave of the crowd. None of them survived. After paying their respects, some students sat on the floor in the hallway and sobbed. At a makeshift altar set up in front of Seoul’s city hall, scores of citizens fended off government officials and politicians as they came to pay their respects. Many young people came to the memorial site. Choi Ji-yoon, 22, told the Guardian that most of the victims were her age or younger, so they did not feel like strangers. “I wanted to honor their memory,” he said. The majority of the dead were young women. Many factors have been blamed for the disaster, including a lack of precautions and crowd control due to the absence of a Halloween organizer. That night, about 100,000 people descended on Itaewon in the Yongsan district of Seoul. Only 137 police officers were on the scene, mainly to prevent traffic and crime. People mourn at a group memorial set up at Seoul City Hall Plaza. Photo: Heo Ran/Reuters The Hankyoreh newspaper said in an article on Tuesday that the disaster in Itaewon was “predictable”, due to the “lack of a safety management manual in the event of a crowd crash accident and the complacent reaction of the authorities”. While South Korea has a safety manual for festivals with more than 1,000 participants, the manual requires an organizing body to be responsible for planning security, which was not the case on Saturday. At a Yongsan district meeting held days before the disaster, the conservative Chosun Ilbo newspaper said “almost no security measures had been prepared.” “The damage could have been minimized and the crowds dispersed if the police and local government had created security plans to block traffic to Itaewon-ro [the main street], which is connected to the strait where the accident occurred. He could also have taken steps to prevent the subway from stopping [at Itaewon station].” South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has ordered the government to create a crowd control system for spontaneous events that do not have organizers. He also called on his cabinet to take “heavy responsibility”. The Home Secretary expressed regret on Tuesday that he had previously said more police would not have prevented the tragedy. Collective trauma is building as South Koreans come to terms with what has happened. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo promised that the government would provide psychological support to all citizens affected by the tragedy, regardless of whether they were in Itaewon at the time. A high school teacher in Gyeonggi province, who did not want to be named, told the Guardian that she recently taught a class about various holidays, such as Halloween, so students could learn about cultural diversity. On Monday morning, the students took down all the Halloween decorations they had put up last Friday, even though no one had asked them to. “Everyone, both students and teachers, is extremely sad,” she said, saying it reminded her of the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014, which killed 304 people, most of them high school students. “I am sorry and feel guilty that our promise to create a safe country was not kept.”
