How a Night of Halloween Revelations Turned into Disaster in South Korea

Seoul:

Itawan District in the capital of South Korea is known as a place of fun, freedom and openness. But its narrow, steep roads and limited access points proved to be a deadly mix for Halloween party-goers, who got caught in a crowd crush that killed more than 150 people.

Dubbed “World Food Street” by tourism authorities, the alley and streets behind the red-brick bulk of the Hamilton Hotel are home to Warren Nightclub, an eclectic variety of bars and restaurants that reflect the international heritage of Itawan and the always young Koreans. Attracts people – more numbers.

As police investigate Saturday’s events, a picture is emerging of how a celebration turned into a disaster—leaving a nation in mass mourning and questions about crowd management and responses by police and local authorities. came in.

The National Police Commissioner, Yoon Hee-kyun, acknowledged that crowd control was inadequate, and President Yoon Suk-yol said it was important to improve emergency responses. Police on Tuesday released transcripts of emergency calls that showed growing disquiet among fun-goers as crowds grew, prompting a nearly four-hour warning, mostly unheard.

This account of the tragedy was pieced together from the testimony of more than 15 witnesses, police tapes, visual evidence and open-source material shared on social media that was verified by Reuters. Some of those who spoke to Reuters did so on condition of full or partial anonymity, citing personal trauma or privacy reasons.

The evening started with optimism. South Korea was making Halloween nearly free of the COVID-19 restrictions that have curtailed the festivities of recent years, and Itawan was ready to party. The crowd was mostly young; Many wore colorful outfits as they congregated in the area with friends.

Officials say more than twice as many people left the Etawah metro station on Saturday compared to a year ago, with the area estimated to house more than 100,000 people. The three narrow streets and alleyways leading to the station were particularly narrow.

The scale of the crowd was evident to Linda, a 20-year-old exchange student from Latvia, when she got off the subway in Itavon shortly before 10 p.m.

“The movement was slow, but bearable,” she said.

Linda and her friends headed north along the part of World Food Street—where booths were set up for face painting and other Halloween crafts, further cramping the space—and left behind Hamilton down a street full of clubs. Turned.

“We thought that soon we would be at some end of Clubbing Street where there wouldn’t be many people,” she said. “we were wrong.”

A 29-year-old South Korean graduate student, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a lot of people could walk easily, but the night was still young, most seemed relatively calm.

Around the same time, Janelle Storey, a 35-year-old teacher from the United States, left the station and headed west before turning north into a narrow alley. She had joined a pub crawl.

“It was shocking to walk through the crowd at 9:30, but it almost felt slow and steady,” she said.

None of these witnesses realized that they were headed to the Hamilton Hotel, swarming ahead, frightened by the density of the crowd, with few reacting, calling the police for hours.

emergency call

According to police, 11 emergency calls were made from Etawah before the crush turned fatal.

“People are going up and down that street, and it’s very worrying… people could be crushed,” said the first caller at 6:34, describing an alleyway on the west side of the Hamilton Hotel, where most of the casualties occurred. About four hours later.

Police said they sent officers in response to four calls, but were still determining what they did when they arrived.

Prime Minister Han Dak-soo said on Wednesday that police should “give a clear and transparent explanation to the public”. Local officials said they did not take any steps to plan crowd control because their protocols are based on events from a central organizer who usually seeks government help.

Witnesses gathered behind the Hamilton Hotel told Reuters they felt a clear change in the crowd shortly after 10 p.m.

Last call issued by police came at 10:11 pm

“(People) are being crushed, everyone is going crazy,” says the unidentified caller, as the phone screams are heard in the transcript.

Linda said she initially thought a fight was going on because club workers were filming the crowd.

“I felt the panic starting to fill the air. The pushing started, we were pushed backwards.”

Instead of a sudden rush or stampede, the density of the crowd had increased, making movement impossible; The survivors said they were finding it difficult to breathe. Some tried to measure buildings to escape. Others screamed, cried or cursed.

“I’m not a tall person, I was literally just trapped by my back and front,” the Korean student said, “People were pushing me in every direction and I couldn’t breathe well.”

Linda and her friends found a small wall to settle at the top of a sloping alley on the west side of Hamilton.

There, at around 10:35, he first saw the police officer, who was standing on something and shouting at the crowd to get away from the hotel.

“We looked at the policeman closely for a second – he was covered in sweat, screaming as loud as he could, but almost helpless,” she said.

Linda and her friends decided to run for it. But it was difficult to stay upright.

“Then the scariest moment happened – for a few seconds all the air disappeared and breathing was possible only if you could rise a little above the crowd,” she said.

pile of bodies

In the sloping alley next to Hamilton’s high brick walls, which narrow from about 7 meters at the top to less than 3.6 meters at the bottom, people began to fall.

A 30-year-old graduate school student from Seoul said, “One person fell next to me, but then the guys behind me kept pushing me, then more people fell and piled on each other.” “I yelled at the people who were pushing me: ‘Don’t push! People fell!'”

People descended in a crush or under others, which left piles of bodies between buildings, some seen unconscious or dead below. Some reached out to a small group of emergency personnel who had arrived at the scene and fought for more than an hour to free them.

On Monday, police said they were investigating conflicting reports that a group of men started making noises just before the street crush, but no single cause beyond overcrowding had been identified.

The Commissioner of Police, however, said on Tuesday that when people called the police to report the situation, the officers did not respond properly until it was too late.

Yongsan fire officials said they received their first emergency call at 10:24 p.m. and the first four ambulances were dispatched at 10:27 p.m. Five minutes later, they deployed nine more ambulances and several fire engines.

As soon as the call for help arrived, by 11:30 p.m. officials were calling dozens more ambulances from the Seoul area.

Flashing lights illuminated the survivors as they hid under blankets on Itawan’s main road.

The death toll stood at 156 with 172 injured as of Thursday. Among the dead, dozens of whom suffered cardiac arrest, were at least six school students, as well as 26 foreign nationals from 14 countries.

crowd density

According to the Seoul Metro, 81,573 people disembarked at Itawan Station on Saturday, up from 31,878 a year earlier.

Experts said that proper crowding and traffic control by officials could have prevented or at least reduced the rush of Halloween party-goers. Instead, officials acknowledged that preparations are focused on taking COVID-19 measures and drug busting.

Paek Seung-joo, a professor of fire and disaster protection at Korea’s Open Cyber ​​University, said police estimates there could be 12 people per square meter in the sloping alley next to Hamilton, where most of the casualties occurred. ,

He said, “You can’t move your arms. You can’t move your body. If that happens, I’m being pushed by the force of the crowd.”

In that case, the characteristics of the crowd change, Peck said.

“People do things they wouldn’t do under normal, reasonable circumstances, like yelling and yelling,” he said. “And then you have competitive behavior, which refers to minimal action to protect yourself in that narrow space.”

Finally, people trapped in those situations are often unable to rationally accept instructions, Peck said.

“In terms of management, we need to control and reduce the density so that we don’t get to that point in the first place,” he said.

Police said they had only 137 officers in Etawah that night. This was slightly higher than in previous years, but far less than the 4,000 posted at political rallies in central Seoul on the same day. According to officials and eyewitnesses, most of the police in Etawah are tasked with traffic control or crime prevention.

Eyewitnesses told Reuters they saw police directing traffic near the main road, but little or none in alleyways.

Interior Minister Lee Sang-min initially said that deploying more police could not have prevented the disaster, but other officials have since acknowledged the shortcomings.

Result

As people slowly broke down or broke free, people standing there and a handful of emergency workers performed CPR on dozens of unconscious people who lined the streets.

At around 11:20 p.m. Park Keun-ho, the owner of the rooftop pub Havana, saw bodies passing down the street, about two blocks from the street. He ran down to help.

Recalling the procedure from TV, he began performing CPR on a young woman, he said. When he regained consciousness, he urged her to stay awake and told him: “Don’t close your eyes!”

Waves and tremors of bodies pressing through the crowd were not limited to the street where many of the deaths occurred, with casualties being reported in many other narrow spaces. Survivors said in some cases it took them more than an hour to escape.

About 50 meters down the street, Storey said his pub crawl group had no idea what was going on.

“The tide of people in which I was caught … was really moving away from the street,” she said. “I realized the very next day that what had happened was that we might have been caught in a stampede of people running out of fear.”

Throughout the devastation, loud music rang out from bars and clubs, calls for help and instructions from the police went out, leaving many people in the neighborhood initially oblivious to the tragedy.

“A moment I’ll never forget — when we were gasping for air, trying to stand up and fall —[had]people in the lounge looking into our eyes drinking, dancing and laughing,” Linda he said.

screams

About 30 meters from the top of the street, architect Ken Fallas, 32, said he heard screams, but the music was hard to understand.

Some police arrived and Fallas said he first saw people on the ground as officers were trying to revive them.

“We thought it was something inside a club, or a fire, or even a fight, we didn’t know if it was due to a stampede,” he said.

“People tried to help but everyone was scared, nobody understood what was happening,” he said.

Social media was soon flooded with shocking photos of bodies queuing in the streets, many with crushes’ clothes and attempts to administer CPR. They would later be wrapped in a blue cloth before being taken to the morgue, where distraught families would collect them.

The whole scale of horrors in Itawan shook the country. Most of those who died were under the age of 30. About two-thirds were women.

“When I sleep at night, I still see those pictures in front of my eyes,” said Park, the owner of the pub.

(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)