How a Festive Night in Seoul Turned Deadly

SEOUL — It was presupposed to be a festive night, throngs of raucous kids dressed as zombies, princesses and tremendous heroes converging on one in every of Seoul’s hottest nightlife districts for his or her first restriction-free Halloween celebration because the pandemic started.

Late Saturday night, they crowded into bars and nightclubs pumping out the newest Okay-pop hits and spilled out into the tight alleys that wind by way of town’s Itaewon neighborhood. They snacked on the Greek, Turkish, Italian and different worldwide meals for which the various district is understood.

Because the evening grew extra frenetic and the mass of revelers swelled, many of them crammed into an alleyway barely 11 ft extensive, in a bottleneck of human traffic that made it tough to breathe and transfer. There have been few cops round, and from throughout the crowd got here calls to “push, push” and an enormous shove, in line with witnesses. Then, they started to fall, a tangle of too many our bodies, compressed into too small of an area.

Zen Ogren, 32, discovered herself caught in a packed and sweltering membership alongside the slim alleyway, a thoroughfare connecting a strip of bars to a busy subway station and a preferred spot for taking pictures. Exterior the membership’s door, folks had been yelling, “Please don’t come out, persons are dying,” she mentioned. Safety guards urged the crowds to not jostle, however many pushed ahead, stepping on prime of those that had fallen.

“They simply wished to exit,” Ms. Ogren mentioned.

Ultimately, greater than 150 folks, most of them of their 20s and 30s, died, crushed beneath the surge of the group.

The tragedy — one in every of South Korea’s worst peacetime disasters — and questions in regards to the authorities’ duty to handle the group, has marred the picture of South Korea, a thriving expertise and pop-culture powerhouse that’s chronically liable to man-made disasters. It has additionally added to political woes of the nation’s beleaguered president, Yoon Suk Yeol, already struggling low approval scores with a rising variety of folks out on the road demanding his resignation.

Because the solar set on Itaewon on Sunday night, a mournful and subdued ambiance suffused the neighborhood. The police closed the streets to site visitors within the space, the place shuttered bars and eating places put up indicators of condolences. On the sidewalks, impromptu memorials of flowers and liquor shaped makeshift shrines to the victims.

Bereaved households searched hospital morgues searching for their kids, whereas the Seoul authorities acquired 1000’s of calls about lacking individuals. Choi Seon-mi waited hours at a area people middle for phrase of her daughter, Park Ga-young, who had made a visit to Seoul.

She fell off her chair when she was informed of her daughter’s demise, left to inform the information to her prolonged household within the ready room.

“It felt just like the sky was falling,” she mentioned. “What to do about my baby? What to do about my baby?”

Ms. Choi’s final dialog together with her daughter, she mentioned, was about Ms. Park’s preparations to check trend in Canada. She had been working half time to pay for it.

Ms. Park was to show 20 on Tuesday.

In briefing after briefing on Sunday, officers, together with the president and the Seoul mayor, Oh Se-hoon, vowed to do every thing they might to make South Korea safer. However they supplied little rationalization for the shortage of crowd management, what went unsuitable within the Itaewon alley and why the nation has had recurring disasters.

In 2014, 16 folks at an outside live performance were killed when the air flow grate they had been standing on caved in. That very same 12 months, a ferry sank, killing greater than 300 folks, most of them highschool college students on a faculty journey.

“Our society has superior enormously in accumulating wealth and constructing the economic system, however we’re far behind in respecting human lives,” mentioned Choi Chang-woo, the chief of the Residents’ Alliance for a Secure Society, a civic group.

Prior to now 5 years working at a kebab store in Itaewon, Ulas Cetinkaya, 36, from Turkey, had by no means seen crowds just like the one on Saturday evening. He figured there can be lots of people as a result of it was one of many first celebrations since Covid restrictions had been lifted, however he was stunned on the minimal police presence.

“I don’t understand how the police weren’t anticipating it,” he mentioned. “I blame the authorities for this.”

In South Korea, the police are normally so good at crowd management that the nation’s protest rallies usually appear to be choreographed occasions. Tens of 1000’s of individuals march down roads chanting protest slogans and even selecting up trash behind themselves. Law enforcement officials clad in vibrant yellow-green jackets stroll alongside, guiding the protesters and thoroughly diverting site visitors.

Whereas Halloween just isn’t historically celebrated in South Korea, it has develop into more and more common over the previous decade, as Seoul has grown extra cosmopolitan. Earlier than the pandemic, dense crowds of costumed revelers packed the streets of Itaewon, a neighborhood intently related to town’s foreigners and American tradition due to its proximity to an previous U.S. navy base.

Nonetheless, officers in Seoul mentioned they had been caught off guard by the unorganized and spontaneous crowds on Saturday evening. In contrast to political and labor rallies, which by legislation should be reported to the authorities prematurely, the younger individuals who descend on Itaewon each Halloween collect freely in massive numbers, with out the restrictions or permits required when internet hosting massive, organized occasions.

On Sunday, the house minister, Lee Sang-min, admitted that the police had been underprepared, partly as a result of their forces had been diverted earlier on Saturday to close by districts the place anti-government protests had been being held.

“The gang this 12 months was not worrisomely greater, in contrast with previous years,” Mr. Lee informed reporters. “However our police forces had been scattered to numerous protests throughout town.”

The scenario, a big crowd with out a big police presence, proved lethal.

Seon Yeo-jeong, a preferred South Korean YouTuber who recounted her expertise on her Instagram web page, remembered listening to folks yell, “Hey, push! We’re stronger! I’ll win!” From there, she mentioned, “Issues abruptly went from order to chaos.”

Search engine optimization Kun, 27, a scholar from China, was within the crush of the group close to the entrance. Round her, she mentioned, folks shouted, “I’m dying.” The girl subsequent to her went silent and stopped respiration.

Ms. Search engine optimization deliberate to remain in South Korea after finishing graduate college, however she has modified her thoughts. “I need to go residence,” she mentioned. “I need to stick with my dad and mom.”

The lethal crowd surge was first reported to the federal government’s emergency-response middle at 10:15 p.m. The federal government’s nearest hearth division and first-response middle was solely about 660 ft from the alley, however it was exhausting for officers to succeed in the victims.

Janelle Story, 35, an American English trainer who was out with two associates in Itaewon, noticed “this sea of our bodies come speeding towards us actually quick” at 10:34 p.m. round a nook from the alleyway. “It appeared to occur so abruptly,” Ms. Story mentioned. Somebody cried out, “There’s a lady down there,” however most within the crowd didn’t seem to take it severely, she mentioned.

There was virtually no crowd management, mentioned Nuhyin Ahmed, 32, a tech employee from India who together with a number of associates tried to affix Halloween revelers within the alley, a preferred place for folks to take pictures of their costumes to publish on social media. Final 12 months, although crowds had been lighter, he mentioned, a number of cops had been monitoring and controlling the doorway to the alley, and so they shut it down round midnight.

“If these police had been there this 12 months,” he mentioned, “perhaps nobody would have died.”

When Lee Joo-young, a witness, bought to Itaewon together with her associates round 11 p.m., they noticed ambulances and hearth vehicles arriving, however the golf equipment nonetheless “had their music blasting.” Ms. Lee mentioned there weren’t sufficient cops or firefighters. Partygoers began to assist with crowd management, dragging the unconscious out of the alleyway.

“The worst half was as folks had been giving CPR and dying, the golf equipment had been nonetheless going, and so they ran till 4 a.m.,” Mr. Ahmed mentioned.

Soh Received, 18, a highschool scholar, mentioned he noticed some partygoers nonetheless consuming and singing subsequent to the our bodies on the road.

“I misplaced my religion in humanity,” he mentioned.

On Sunday, the blocked alleyways of Itaewon contained the detritus from the social gathering and catastrophe of the evening earlier than: strewn paper, plastic baggage, beer cans and water bottles.

As makeshift memorials crammed the sidewalks, mourners cried brazenly. Ellen Olsson, a Swede who left flowers by the alley, mentioned the tragedy had shaken many within the neighborhood.

“This place is full of police and chaos, so it’s good to let folks know we care,” she mentioned.

Subsequent to the alley, somebody posted a handwritten message that learn, “Condolences, please go to a greater world and understand your unfulfilled goals.” Beneath it had been flowers and a bottle of soju, a preferred Korean alcohol, with a stack of small paper cups.

Chang Che, Tiffany Could and Claire Fu contributed reporting.