South Koreans demand answers to 'preventable' Halloween crush that killed at least 154
Unwitting revellers danced around ambulances while desperate rescuers tried in vain to get to suffocating victims in Seoul's "hell-like" Halloween crush, witnesses have shared, as calls for accountability grow over one of South Korea's worst disasters.
At least 154 people, mostly teenagers and young adults, were killed after thousands squeezed into a narrow alley in the nightlife district of Itaewon on Saturday night. They included 26 victims from 14 other countries, including Iran, China, Russia, the United States, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and Sri Lanka.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, who declared a weeklong national mourning period from Sunday, visited an altar in central Seoul for the victims on Monday, laying a single white flower and bowing deeply.
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Authorities have launched an investigation to determine what caused the crowd to surge into the downhill alley in Itaewon, amid accusations of lax police crowd control on a night with some 100,000 revellers expected to converge in the hip district for Halloween.
Son Won-bae, a fire service administration professor at Chodang University, said authorities in charge of securing the safety of people's lives had failed to set up preventive measures on grounds that Halloween festivities at nightclubs and bars were not covered by laws and regulations that ensure public safety at art performances and sports events.
"I agree that this is a human-caused disaster that could have been prevented," he told This Week in Asia, adding the lack of safety measures among authorities and a low public awareness of the danger of crowd crushes made a fatal combination.
Witnesses said people fell on each other "like dominoes" in a chaotic crush so intense that clothes were ripped off, with some describing nightmarish scenes of people performing CPR on the dying and carrying limp bodies to ambulances, as dance music blasted from neon-lit clubs.
Ken Fallas, a Costa Rican architect who went to Itaewon with friends, took smartphone footage of unconscious people being carried out from the alley as others shouted for help. He said the booming music made things more chaotic.
"When we just started to move forward, there was no way to go back," Fallas said. "We didn't hear anything because the music was really loud. Now, I think that was one of the main things that made this so complicated."
Footage has gone viral of a crowd of revellers dancing in front of waiting ambulances as emergency crews struggled to reach the victims.
"Many people at the time could have thought it was a Halloween performance, even when firefighters were arriving at the scene to perform CPR and the sounds of 'help me' were resounding," a shopkeeper near the site told Yonhap news agency.
"It was really chaotic. We said to ourselves many times; 'it is dangerous to be here'. It was really noisy with screams and shouts, with many shouting 'push, push' while others 'don't push don't push'," he wrote on his Instagram page.
"Rescue workers were overwhelmed and they called for help. I also joined other passers-by to conduct CPR on victims. Of the many people who received CPR on the road, I saw only one survive."
Some 100,000 people were expected to converge on the entertainment zone on Saturday, but only about 130 policemen had reportedly been deployed in the Itaewon neighbourhood in advance, with their missions mainly to help prevent sex crimes, drug trafficking and thefts.
Calls for accountability grew on Monday in the press and online, as potential lapses of crowd control and policing emerged.
Online, claims also spread that police this year were not actively managing the crowd, which allowed too many people to congregate around the subway station and in the alleyway at the epicentre of the disaster.
"I've lived in Itaewon for 10 years and experienced Halloween every year but yesterday was by no means particularly crowded compared to previous years," Twitter user @isakchoi312 wrote. "Ultimately, I think the cause of the disaster was crowd control."
On Sunday, the government had defended the policing plan.
Lee Sang-min, Seoul's interior and safety minister, sparked outrage by saying on Sunday that the tragedy was not preventable by deploying a greater number of policemen, asserting that the size of the crowds there was not so great compared with previous years.
He also appeared to pin part of the blame on anti-government protests that took place elsewhere in Seoul, where "a considerable number of police and security forces" had been deployed to secure order.
"This is nothing but a human-caused disaster which was only waiting to happen. It's not justifiable to pin the blame for the disaster on revellers", the Kyunghyang daily said in an editorial on Sunday.
Choi Jin, head of the Institute of Presidential Leadership, said the tragedy evoked memories of the Sewol ferry disaster eight years ago when 304 people, mostly high school boys on a school excursion, perished.
Then-president Park Geun-hye came under criticism for presumed negligence in dealing with the 2014 disaster. She consequently saw her political fortune going downhill until she was impeached and jailed for corruption and power abuse.
President Yoon has seen low approval ratings since his inauguration in May amid controversy over his alleged incompetence, habitual gaffes and his controversial high-profile wife.
"This is a serious blow to Yoon. When the dust settles, Yoon should issue a sincere public apology for failing to protect people's lives and some heads will roll. People will closely watch how he deals with this crisis", he said.
Additional reporting by AP and AFP
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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