South Korean police are investigating what caused a crowd surge that killed more than 150 people during Halloween festivities in Seoul on Saturday in the nation’s worst disaster in years, as South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and the public paid respects to the dead at temporary mourning sites.
The deadly crowd surge was concentrated in a sloped, narrow alley in Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood, a popular nightlife district, with witnesses and survivors recalling a “hell-like” chaos of people falling on each other “like dominoes.”
Police launched a 561-member task force to delve into details of the crush, the South Korean Ministry of the Interior and Safety said in a news release.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Officers are analyzing footage taken by security cameras in the area at the time of the crush and related video clips posted on social media. They were also interviewing witnesses to find exactly when and where the crowd surge started and how it developed, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said.
A team of police officers and government forensic experts were to conduct a joint investigation on the Itaewon area, media reports said.
“The government will thoroughly investigate the cause of the incident and do its best to make necessary improvements of systems to prevent a similar accident from recurring,” South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said at the start of a government meeting on the disaster.
Police said in a statement they fielded 137 officers to maintain order during Saturday’s Halloween festivities in Itaewon — much more than the 34 to 90 officers mobilized in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Citing the figures, police dismissed as “different from the truth” speculation that a police station in the area was understaffed because it has been providing extra security to Yoon, who relocated the presidential office to a site near Itaewon.
The police statement said that police-provided security for a president has long been handled by two special police units and that the units have nothing to do with the Yongsan police station, whose jurisdiction includes Itaewon.
Some observers say the scope of the police investigation would include an apparent lack of safety steps, as well as looking into witness accounts of the crowd surge being caused by some people intentionally pushing others and making them fall.
As of yesterday morning, the government said it has identified 153 of the 154 dead people and informed bereaved relatives. Nearly two-thirds of the dead — 98 — were women. It said that 149 others were injured. The death count could rise farther, as officials said 33 of the injured were in serious condition.
More than 80 percent of the dead were in their 20s or 30s and 11 were teenagers, the news release said.
The dead also included 26 foreigners: Five were from Iran; four from China; four from Russia; two from the US; two from Japan; and one each from Australia, Norway, France, Austria, Vietnam, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Sri Lanka, the interior ministry said.
As the identifications of the dead neared completion, bereaved families were expected to begin funerals for their loved ones.
Officials said the government would provide necessary support to bereaved relatives for funeral procedures.
Yoon on Sunday declared a one-week national mourning period, and ordered flags at government buildings and public offices to fly at half-staff.
The government opened temporary memorials yesterday in Seoul and other major cities in South Korea. People ranging from ordinary citizens to top officials, including Yoon, visited the sites, placed white flowers and bowed deeply to show respect.
Many people also laid chrysanthemums, bottles of soju, candles and snacks near an Itaewon subway station, with a host of condolence messages posted on the wall and elsewhere.
In the wake of the disaster, many hotels, department stores, amusement parks and other businesses in South Korea have canceled Halloween-themed events.
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