Surviving in the World: Tragedy in South Korea

A picture taken before a deadly crush occurred near the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon in Yongsan District, central Seoul, on Saturday night when a large crowd visited the area for Halloween. (Source: YONHAP)

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Itaewon for the first restriction-free Halloween festival. The night began with festivities. It ended with a tragedy.

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On October 29th, Itaewon hosted its first restriction-free Halloween festival in more than 2 years. Although the hype brought more than 10,000 partygoers to the various nightclubs and bars on the international streets, as the night grew darker, hordes of people began to swell up inside a narrow alley until there were too many for the alley to handle

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• The first call for help came at 10:15 PM, around the time when the stampeding began.

• A first-stage emergency response order was issued at 10:43 PM, a second-stage order at 11:13 PM, and a third-stage order at 11:50 PM, nearly 2 hours after the first call for help.

• As of Sunday, 11 PM, there have been 154 deaths and 132 injuries confirmed. Many were crushed to death or died of traumatic asphyxiation.

• This was the deadliest disaster in Korea after the sinking of the Sewol-ho in 2014.

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All across social media platforms, citizens of Korea are criticizing the government for its inadequate preparation for the festival, saying that this disaster could have been prevented if there were more police forces supervising the event as many people were predicted to attend the Halloween festival.

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According to the government, there were in fact 130 or more police officers at the scene of the event supervising the festival. However, they were on the lookout for drugs or crime and there were no officers in charge of overlooking pedestrian road safety.

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