More than 150 people are killed in a stampede in the South Korean capital. Although desperate calls reach the police hours before the panic erupts, the officers only show up when it is too late. The government assures that those responsible are being investigated.
After the mass panic in Seoul that killed more than 150 people, transcripts of emergency calls show that hours before the panic broke out, many people had warned of a catastrophe because of the many participants in the Halloween celebrations – and that the people on site were becoming increasingly desperate.
The authorities initially said that the first emergency call was received by the fire department on Saturday at 10:15 p.m. local time. However, the transcripts show that a caller asked for help at 6:34 p.m. At 8:09 p.m., an emergency call said: “There are too many people here, they are being pushed, trampled, injured. It’s chaotic. You have to bring this under control.” At 10:11 p.m. shortly before the accident, a caller reported: “It looks like people are being crushed to death, total chaos.”
The callers needed “terribly urgent help or police intervention,” Prime Minister Han emphasized. The Ministry of the Interior announced a reform of the emergency call centers. The government will learn from the disaster and “do its best to create a safer society,” said a ministry official. Those responsible will be held strictly accountable once the investigation is complete. Interior Minister Lee Sang Min asked for pardon for the accident in parliament on Tuesday. South Korea’s police chief and the mayor of Seoul also apologized publicly.
On Saturday evening, at least 156 mostly young people died at the first Halloween celebrations in Seoul’s popular nightlife district Itaewon since the beginning of the corona pandemic. Several others were injured. At that point, around 100,000 people had poured into the narrow streets; but since the celebrations were not officially registered, neither the police nor representatives of the local authorities were on site to control the crowd.
A full investigation into the accident was launched. Investigators searched several police buildings. According to a spokesman for the national police, offices in the district where the stampede took place were searched.
In South Korea, crowd control is usually strictly regulated. This means, among other things, that there are often more police officers than protesters present at demonstrations. For the Halloween celebrations, however, the police said they had dispatched only 137 officers to Itaewon, while 6,500 officers, according to media reports, monitored a protest rally across town that was attended by only about 25,000 people. Opposition leader Lee Jae Myung called on senior government officials to take responsibility for the accident. “Downplaying, covering up and manipulating to avoid responsibility will never be forgiven,” he said at a meeting of his Democratic Party.