Botched response blamed for deadly Seoul Halloween crush, 23 officials face charges
- South Korea’s police concluded a months-long investigation into the tragedy that killed 159 people in the Itaewon nightlife district
- The inquiry found authorities misjudged the situation and delayed sharing information, leading to large casualties
The annual festivities in the popular nightlife area of Itaewon turned deadly on October 29 after tens of thousands of young revellers crowded into narrow alleyways to celebrate the first Halloween free of Covid curbs in three years.
Authorities, including the police, did not devise safety measures even though dense crowds made an accident likely, and did not take appropriate steps after calls for rescue started coming in, said Sohn Je-han, who led the investigation.
“Misjudgment of the situation, delay in sharing information and lack of cooperation among related agencies accumulated to cause large casualties,” Sohn told reporters.
South Koreans demand answers to ‘preventable’ Halloween crush
The investigation team has referred 23 people, including the head of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, to prosecutors.
No officials from the national government were referred to prosecutors over the incident when people were squeezed into a 3.2m wide alleyway during Halloween festivities that authorities estimated attracted about 100,000 people.
The alley was located near an exit for a subway station and has been a heavily-used passage for pedestrian traffic moving between a main street in the area and the restaurants, bars and nightclubs on the other side.
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South Korean police seek charges against 23 officials over deadly Itaewon crowd crush
About 140 officers were deployed to the Itaewon nightlife area where the incident occurred. Most of the officers were there mainly for crime prevention and authorities have been faulted for not doing more to control the crowd.
The bereaved families and opposition lawmakers have criticised the police investigation for failing to hold top officials accountable.
“We have so many questions unanswered,” Lee Jong-chul, head of a group representing the bereaved families, told reporters as he arrived at a prosecutors’ office in Seoul. “We came here to give a victim’s statement, expecting a better, expanded investigation.”
‘People are falling down’: call transcripts reveal fear at Seoul Halloween crush
Experts have said the density of people packed in a narrow and restricted alley may have reached a level that made such a disaster almost inevitable. Witnesses and media reports indicate that as people squeezed into the alley, some began to fall, causing others to tumble and pile into one another.
Forces generated by crowd surges have been strong enough to bend steel bars, and the main cause of death is often asphyxiation, they said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
