SEOUL – It was supposed to be a festive evening, as crowds of young people dressed as zombies, princesses and superheroes converged on one of Seoul’s most popular nightlife districts for the first time. Unlimited Halloween celebrations since the pandemic began.
Late Saturday night, they crammed into bars and nightclubs to unleash the latest K-pop hits and spill out onto the narrow alleys that run through the city’s Itaewon neighborhood. They snack on Greek, Turkish, Italian and other international dishes for which the diverse region is known.
As the night grew crazier and the volume of revelers increased, many of them are crammed into an alley only 11 feet wide, in a human traffic congestion makes it hard to breathe and move. There were few police officers around, and from within the crowd came calls for “push, shove” and loud jostles, according to witnesses. Then they began to fall, a jumble of too many bodies, compressed into too small a void.
Zen Ogren, 32, finds himself trapped in a crowded and stuffy club along a narrow alleyway, a major road that connects a strip of bars with a busy subway station and is a photo spot famous. Outside the club doors, people were shouting, “Please don’t go out, people are dying,” she said. Security guards urged the crowd not to jostle, but many pushed and stomped on those who had fallen.
“They just wanted to hang out,” Mrs. Ogren said.
In the end, more than 150 people, most of them in their 20s and 30s, died, crushed under the rising crowds.
The tragedy – one of Korea’s worst peacetime disasters – and questions about the government’s responsibility to manage crowds, have tarnished South Korea’s image as a technological and cultural powerhouse. Massive culture thrives, which often suffers from man-made disasters. It also adds to the political woes of the country’s supposed president, Yoon Suk Yeol, who has had a low approval rating with more and more people taking to the streets demanding his resignation.
As the sun set over Itaewon on Sunday night, an atmosphere of mourning and gloom pervaded the neighborhood. Police have closed streets to traffic in the area, where bars and restaurants have closed with signs of condolence. On the sidewalk, improvise flowers and memorial wine to form temporary shrines for the victims.
The rescued families searched hospital morgues in search of their children, while the Seoul government received thousands of calls about the missing. Choi Seon-mi waited for hours at a local community center for news of her daughter, Park Ga-young, who had arrived in Seoul.
She fell from her chair when she heard that her daughter had died, which she left to tell her extended family in the waiting room.
“It feels like the sky is falling,” she said. “What to do with my baby? What to do with my child? “
She said Ms. Choi’s last conversation with her daughter was about Ms. Park preparing to go to Canada to study fashion. She worked part-time to pay for it.
Ms. Park will turn 20 on Tuesday.
In a press conference following Sunday’s briefing, officials, including the president and mayor of Seoul, Oh Se-hoon, vowed to do everything they could to make South Korea safer. But they offered little explanation for the lack of crowd control, what happened in Itaewon Alley and why the country has had recurring disasters.
In 2014, 16 people at an outdoor concert were killed when the ventilation grilles they were standing over the cave. That same year, a ferry sankkilled more than 300 people, most of them high school students, during a school trip.
“Our society has made great progress in accumulating wealth and building our economy, but we are far behind in respecting human life,” said Choi Chang-woo, leader of the Alliance. Citizens for a Safe Society, a group of citizens, said.
In the past five years working at a barbecue shop in Itaewon, 36-year-old Ulas Cetinkaya from Turkey has never seen a crowd like a Saturday night. He guessed there would be a lot of people as it was one of the first celebrations since Covid restrictions were lifted, but he was surprised at the minimal police presence.
“I don’t know how the police didn’t expect that,” he said. “I blame the authorities for this.”
In South Korea, the police are often so good at controlling crowds that the country’s protests often look like staged events. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets chanting protest slogans and even picking up trash behind their backs. Police officers in bright yellow-green vests walked alongside, guiding the protesters and carefully directing traffic.
Although Halloween is not traditionally celebrated in Korea, it has become increasingly popular over the past decade, as Seoul has grown more cosmopolitan. Before the pandemic, thick crowds of people in costume had packed the streets of Itaewon, a neighborhood associated with expats and the city’s American culture because of its proximity to a former military base. USA.
However, officials in Seoul said they were caught off guard by the disorganized and spontaneous crowds on Saturday night. Unlike political and labor protests, which are required by law to be reported to the authorities in advance, young people who come to Itaewon every Halloween gather freely in large numbers, without restrictions or paperwork. necessary permission when organizing large, organized events.
On Sunday, the interior minister, Lee Sang-min, acknowledged that the police were ill-prepared, in part because their forces had been directed earlier on Saturday to neighboring districts where the protests were taking place. anti-government going on.
“The crowd this year was not significantly larger than in previous years,” Mr. Lee told reporters. “But our police force has dispersed to various protests across the city.”
The situation, a large crowd without a police presence, proved deadly.
Seon Yeo-jeong, a popular Korean YouTuber who recounted his experience on his Instagram page, remembers hearing people shouting, “Hey, push! We are stronger! I’ll win!” From there, she said, “Things suddenly went from order to chaos.”
Seo Kun, 27 years old, a student from China, was in the crowd near the front. She said that around her, people were shouting, “I’m dying.” The woman next to her was silent and stopped breathing.
Ms. Seo planned to stay in Korea after completing her graduate program, but she changed her mind. “I want to go home,” she said. “I want to stay with my parents.”
The fatal crowding was first reported to the government’s emergency response center at 10:15pm. The nearest government fire department and first responder center was only about 660 feet down the alley, but it was difficult for officers to reach the victims.
Janelle Story, 35, an American English teacher who was hanging out with two friends in Itaewon, saw “this sea of bodies rushing towards us very quickly” at 10:34 p.m. around a corner from an alley . “It seemed to happen all of a sudden,” Ms. Story said. Someone shouted, “There’s a girl down there,” but most of the crowd didn’t seem to take it seriously, she said.
Nuhyin Ahmed, 32, a tech worker from India, who along with some friends tried to participate in Halloween fun activities in the alley, a popular place for people to take pictures in the site their clothes to post on social media. Last year, although the crowds were less, he said, some police were monitoring and controlling the entrance to the alley, and they closed around midnight.
“If those cops had been there this year,” he said, “perhaps no one would have died.”
When Lee Joo-young, a witness, arrived in Itaewon with her friends around 11 p.m., they saw ambulances and fire trucks arriving, but the clubs still “had their music.” Ms. Lee said there were not enough police or firefighters. Partygoers began assisting with crowd control, pulling the unconscious out of the alley.
“The worst part is when people are on CPR and dying, the clubs are still running, and they run until 4am,” Mr Ahmed said.
Soh Won, 18, a high school student, said he saw some partygoers still drinking and singing next to bodies on the street.
“I lost faith in humanity,” he said.
On Sunday, the sealed alleys of Itaewon contained debris from the previous night’s party and disaster: paper, plastic bags, beer cans and water bottles littered around.
As makeshift memorials filled the sidewalks, mourners cried openly. Ellen Olsson, a Swede who left flowers by the alley, said the tragedy had shaken many people in the area.
“This place is full of police and chaos, so it’s good to let people know we care,” she said.
Next to the alley, someone posted a handwritten message that read, “My condolences, please come to a better world and fulfill your unfulfilled dreams.” Below are flowers and a bottle of soju, a popular Korean liquor, and a stack of small paper cups.
Chang Che, Tiffany May and Claire Fu contribution report.
