The government is facing growing public scrutiny over whether Saturday night’s crash in Seoul’s Itaewon district, a popular nightlife neighborhood, could have been prevented and who should take responsibility for the country’s worst disaster in years. National Police Chief Yoon Hee-keun said an initial investigation found that there had been many emergency calls from citizens alerting authorities to the potential danger of a crowd gathering in Itaewon. He said the officers who received the calls failed to handle them effectively. “I feel a heavy responsibility [for the disaster] as the head of one of the relevant government offices,” Yun said at a televised news conference. “The police will do everything they can to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again.” Yoon said police have launched an intense internal investigation into officers’ handling of emergency calls and other issues, such as the on-the-spot response to the crowd surge in Itaewon that night. Separately, South Korea’s interior minister, the head of the emergency office, the mayor of Seoul and the head of a division office that includes the Itaewon neighborhood all issued public apologies. Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon apologized profusely and cried, briefly interrupting a press conference as he spoke about the parent of a 20-year-old woman who was pronounced dead earlier in the day. “When I tried to comfort a person with a daughter who was hospitalized at the National Medical Center yesterday, they said their daughter would survive and they believed it,” he said. “But I heard he died this morning. I’m sorry my apology came late.”
Most of the victims were women
The disaster — which left at least 156 dead and another 151 injured — was centered on a narrow downhill alley in Itaewon. Witnesses described people falling over each other, experiencing severe breathing difficulties and falling unconscious. They said rescuers and ambulances were unable to reach the crowded alleyways in time because the entire Itaewon area was filled with slow-moving vehicles and parties dressed in Halloween costumes. Most of the dead were between the ages of 20 and 30, and about two-thirds were women. During a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, President Yoon Suk-yeol acknowledged that South Korea lacks crowd management research. He called for the use of drones and other high-tech resources to develop an effective crowd control capability and said the government would soon meet with experts to review national security rules. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol holds a flower that will be placed as a tribute to the victims during a visit on Tuesday to the scene of the Halloween crowd crush. (Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters) The surge is South Korea’s deadliest disaster since the 2014 ferry sinking that killed 304 people and exposed lax safety rules and regulatory failures. Saturday’s explosion has raised public questions about what South Korea has done since then to prevent man-made disasters. “My heart hurts a lot as all the victims were like my grandchildren,” said 74-year-old Chung Kil-sun after paying his respects at a mourning station on Tuesday. “People say our country is an advanced country, but I don’t think we’re really advanced.” After the Itaewon disaster, the police launched a 475-member task force to find its cause.
Video analysis
Senior police officer Nam Gu-Jun told reporters on Monday that officers received footage taken from about 50 security cameras in the area and analyzed video clips posted on social media. Nam said police have also interviewed more than 40 witnesses and survivors so far. Police said they sent 137 officers to maintain order during Halloween celebrations on Saturday, far more than the 34 to 90 officers deployed in 2017, 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic. But some observers questioned whether the 137 officers were enough to handle the 100,000 or so people who gathered Saturday in Itaewon. People mourn at a group memorial service in Seoul on Tuesday for the victims of the crowd crush. (Heo Ran/Reuters) Adding more questions about the role of the police was the fact that 7,000 officers were sent to another part of Seoul earlier on Saturday to monitor the protest duels involving tens of thousands of people. The police also acknowledged that the 137 officers sent to Itaewon were mainly assigned to monitor crime, with a particular focus on drug use rather than crowd control. The death toll could rise as officials said 29 of the injured were in serious condition. The dead include 26 foreign nationals from Iran, China, Russia, the United States, Japan and elsewhere.
