153 people were killed in a Seoul nightlife crush on Halloween, prompting President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea to declare a day of national mourning.
Yoon sent his sympathies to the victims, who were primarily young adults and teenagers, and wished the many injured in one of the biggest stampedes to hit the world in decades a swift recovery.
He issued a statement that read, “This is extremely unfortunate. Last night, a catastrophe and disaster that shouldn’t have happened occurred in the center of Seoul.
On Saturday night, a large crowd partying in the well-known Itaewon district spilled into an alley, according to emergency officials, who also warned that the death toll might well up.
82 individuals were hurt, 19 of them seriously, according to Choi Sung-beom, chief of the Yongsan Fire Station, who spoke during a briefing on the site. He said that 22 foreigners were among the dead.
At community centers that have turned into impromptu holding locations for the missing, families and friends pleaded for news of lost loved ones.
At least 90% of the victims had been identified as of midday, according to the Interior Ministry, with some foreign nationals and youth without identification cards experiencing difficulties.
After the incident, South Korean computer and mobile gaming companies including Kakao and NCSOFT canceled their Halloween promotions, and the amusement park Everland postponed its Halloween-themed activities. Festivals and other events have been canceled or scaled back by many regional governments and organizations.
There have been at least 151 verified fatalities and 82 injuries, including 19 critical ones.
DISORDER, THEN CHAOS
It was the first Halloween celebration in Seoul to be largely free of COVID-19 limitations and social estrangement in three years. The partygoers were mostly dressed in Halloween costumes and masks.
The events had already begun to draw potentially dangerous crowds twenty-four hours prior, and the victims’ families had raised concerns about what appeared to be a lack of crowd management.
Early on Sunday, bloodstains mixed with costumes and personal items in the confined space. In the midst of swarms of emergency personnel, law enforcement, and media, survivors hid under emergency blankets.
According to Choi, many of those killed were close to a club. According to him, many of the victims were young women in their 20s, and those killed abroad came from China, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Norway.
Witnesses reported that as the evening wore on, the gathering became more rowdy and furious. Just before the stampede at 10:20 p.m. (1320 GMT), chaos broke out, and police on the scene at the time were unable to keep the throng under control, according to witnesses.
Moon Ju-young, 21, claimed that prior to the incident, there were obvious indications of disturbance in the alley. It was more than ten times as crowded, he told Reuters.
Hundreds of people were jammed into the tight, sloping lane, crushed and immovable as emergency personnel and police attempted to extricate them, as seen in social media footage.
All of the deaths, according to Choi, the fire chief for the Yongsan area, were probably caused by the alley’s crowding.
CHANGE MORGUE
Fire officials and witnesses claimed that once the alley was already jam-packed to the gills, people kept pouring in, and when those at the top of the hill fell, individuals below them tipped over one another.
One mom claimed that after being imprisoned for more than an hour, her daughter was saved after being rescued from the crowd.
Next to the scene, a temporary morgue was put up in a building. According to a Reuters witness, some four dozen bodies were hauled out on stretchers and taken to a government building so the victims could be identified.
With its dozens of bars and restaurants crowded on Saturday for Halloween after businesses had experienced a steep downturn during three years of the pandemic, the Itaewon district is well-liked by young South Koreans and foreigners alike.
“You would see enormous crowds during Christmas and fireworks,” Park Jung-hoon, 21, told Reuters from the scene. “But this was several ten-folds bigger than any of that.”
President Joe Biden of the United States and Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed their sympathies, noting that Chinese nationals were among the injured and killed.
Curfews on pubs and restaurants and a cap of 10 individuals for private parties were eased in April as a result of the COVID pandemic’s lessening. A requirement for outside masks was removed in May.
President Yoon convened an urgent meeting with top advisers and gave the order to form a task group to gather funding for medical care for the injured and to begin a thorough investigation into what caused the accident.
The tragedy is among the deadliest to hit the nation since a boat disaster in 2014 that claimed 304 lives, mostly teenagers.
South Korea was shocked by the sinking of the Sewol and the backlash against the government’s response, which sparked a national debate about safety measures that will undoubtedly be rekindled in the wake of Saturday’s crush.
