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Halloween isn’t a vacation historically celebrated in South Korea — however as Seoul has grown extra cosmopolitan lately and with an growing variety of South Koreans returning after years overseas, it has grow to be a extra common event, one during which the town’s rising variety is on full show.
The celebrations have all the time centered round Itaewon, a neighborhood intently related to the town’s foreigners and American tradition due to the proximity to the U.S. army base, even after its current relocation.
The vacation started taking off amongst South Koreans round 2011, based on a neighborhood road photographer who has been documenting Halloween celebrations within the nation for a few decade. In 2012, locals appeared to outnumber foreigners in crowds decked out in costume, and by 2018, the streets of Itaewon had been so stuffed with revelers that it was difficult to walk down, based on a weblog submit by the photographer.
Itaewon’s Halloween celebrations had been extra subdued lately amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The neighborhood noticed one of many metropolis’s earliest cluster outbreaks and have become the goal of a targeted crackdown by Seoul metropolis authorities.
On Halloween 2020, officers had been requiring QR code check-ins, and in 2021, the town was going from enterprise to enterprise to implement pandemic controls, together with urging eating places to go away about 30 % of their tables open.
This 12 months, the primary Halloween after most social-distancing measures had been lifted, police mentioned they had been able to maintain attendees protected.
“With restrictions lifted on golf equipment and different institutions, the joy is extra heightened than ever,” the Yongsan district police workplace mentioned in a press release on Thursday. Cautioning in opposition to medication and sexual crimes, they mentioned greater than 200 police could be on the streets of Itaewon.
Even so, after Saturday’s catastrophe a authorities minister mentioned that authorities had not been anticipating crowds bigger than a typical 12 months. Some cops had been redirected elsewhere within the metropolis due to large-scale political rallies, Lee Sang-min, the minister of the inside and security, mentioned in a briefing.
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