South Korea's police chief has said that officers had received multiple urgent reports of danger ahead of a deadly crowd crush at a Halloween event, but their handling of them was "insufficient".
At least 156 mostly young people were killed, and scores more injured, in a deadly crowd surge late Saturday at the first post-pandemic Halloween party in Seoul's popular Itaewon nightlife district.
An estimated 100,000 people had flocked to the area, but because it was not an "official" event with a designated organiser, neither the police nor local authorities were actively managing the crowd.
"There were multiple reports to the police indicating the seriousness at the site just before the accident occurred," national police chief Yoon Hee-keun said.
Police knew "a large crowd had gathered even before the accident occurred, urgently indicating the danger," he said, acknowledging the way this information was handled had been "insufficient".
South Korea is typically strong on crowd control, with protest rallies often so heavily policed that officers can outnumber participants.
But in the case of the Itaewon Halloween festivities, there was no designated event organiser, with people flocking to the area to attend events held by individual bars, clubs and restaurants.
Police said they had deployed 137 officers to Itaewon for Halloween - but 6,500 officers were present at a protest across town that was only attended by about 25,000 people, local reports said.
"This was a disaster that could have been controlled or prevented," Lee Young-ju, a professor from the Department of Fire and Disaster at the University of Seoul, told broadcaster YTN.
"But this was not taken care of, with no one taking the responsibility in the first place."
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol today said the country needed to urgently improve its system for managing large crowds in the wake of the disaster.
"The safety of the people is important, whether or not there is an event organiser," he told a cabinet meeting.
He called for the country to develop "cutting-edge digital capabilities" to improve crowd management - but critics claim such tools already exist and were not deployed in Itaewon.
Disaster was avoidable
Seoul's City Hall has a real-time crowd monitoring system that uses mobile phone data to predict crowd size, but it was not employed Saturday night, local media reported.
Itaewon's district authorities also did not deploy any safety patrols, with officials saying the Halloween event was considered "a phenomenon" rather than "a festival", which would have required an official plan for crowd control.
On the night, tens of thousands of people thronged a narrow alleyway, with eyewitnesses describing how, with no police or crowd control in sight, confused partygoers pushed and shoved, crushing those trapped in the lane.
Analysts say this was easily avoidable, even with only a small number of police officers.
"Good, safe crowd management is not about the ratio, but about the crowd strategy - for safe crowd capacity, flow, density," said G. Keith Still, a crowd science professor at the University of Suffolk.
South Korean expert Lee Young-ju said that if local police knew they would be short-handed, they could have sought help from local authorities or even residents or shop owners.
"It's not just the numbers," Lee, a professor from the Department of Fire and Disaster at the University of Seoul, told AFP.
"The question is, how did they manage with the limited number (of police) and what kind of measures did they take to make up for it."
Earlier, mourners wept, prayed and placed flowers at a huge official altar set up in central Seoul for victims, mostly young women, of the Saturday crush, with many railing against authorities' failures to prevent the catastrophic loss of young life.
The South Korean Ambassador to Ireland told RTÉ's Morning Ireland yesterday that the people of South Korea were shocked by the tragedy.
Ki-hwan Kweon said that it was still unbelievable and simply heartbreaking to hear of the tragedy.
"I am devastated by what happened, they were just trying to have a good time," said 19-year-old student Hwang Gyu-hyeon, weeping and struggling to speak clearly, as she explained how the deaths of so many people her own age had affected her.
"I pray for the victims. I can't believe this accident happened despite the signs that were clear beforehand. Nothing was done to prepare for this crowd," she said.
At a makeshift memorial outside a subway station in the popular Itaewon nightlife district, where the tragedy occurred, dozens of mourners gathered, many wiping away tears as they placed white chrysanthemum and bottles of soju on the altar.
One sign left at the memorial said: "At an age when you all were all about to blossom like flowers... My heart is broken. I pray all the souls will rest in peace in heaven."
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
