South Korean youtuber Sun Yeo Jung was one of the thousands of people who went to the Itaewon neighborhood in Seoul on Saturday night to celebrate Halloween night. But once there, the party was twisted by the number of people present, and even she feared for her life. “I thought she was going to crush me or suffocate me if she tripped and fell,” she later recounted on Instagram.
The young woman, whom a friend helped to get out of the human tide that was pressing her in all directions, saw people passed out on the ground and how some toilets and volunteers tried to revive them. “There were screams and scenes of despair, like in a disaster movie,” she added.
Sun can consider herself lucky. According to the latest official count, at least 154 people died and another 133 were injured – 37 in serious condition, so the death toll could increase – in the crowd registered in a steep alley near the Hotel Hamilton, in front of the Itaewon subway station.
Many of the deceased are in their twenties and, among them, 98 women. 26 foreigners from more than a dozen countries such as China, Iran, Russia, Norway or the United States have also been identified. From the Embassy of Spain in the country they assure that at the moment no Spaniard has been registered among the identified deceased.
The images that circulate about what happened are overwhelming. In some videos, a crowd can be seen trapped in the alley, about four meters wide and 45 long, in which a pin does not fit and moves in waves, with people falling “like dominoes”, according to some witnesses. Others show people being dragged away leaving behind masks and accessories for their costumes, while several of those present practice resuscitation maneuvers on the victims who are piling up on the pavement.
“People started pushing from behind, it was like a wave. There was nothing you could do, ”Nuhyil Ahammed, 32, also trapped at the scene of the tragedy, told him on the networks. “I haven’t been able to sleep, I can still see people dying in front of me.” The number of people gathered also made it difficult for ambulances and other emergency vehicles to access the area.
The night also left anguished images among those who were looking for their loved ones in hospitals and other facilities set up to care for victims. “Maybe he has died, I don’t know, I can’t find him,” the mother of a young man whose phone gave a signal for the last time in Itaewon said desperately at the door of the Soonchunhyang hospital, according to the local newspaper The Korea Herald.
Different media estimate that some 100,000 people gathered last night in Itaewon, a well-known neighborhood in the capital that is located next to a gigantic US military base recently closed. The area is known for its nightlife, which each year attracts thousands of people during Christmas or Halloween nights, although according to witnesses, as many as this year had never come together. “It was at least 10 times more crowded than usual,” one of the witnesses, Park Jung-Hoon, told Reuters.
On Sunday morning, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol announced a week of national mourning and called for a full investigation into its causes to help prevent similar ones. “It is a tragedy and a disaster that should not have happened,” he lamented in a speech broadcast from the presidential office, in which he conveyed his condolences to the relatives of the victims. The focus is on whether safety standards and crowd control measures were met.
In this sense, the Minister of the Interior, Lee Sang Min, pointed out that the Police did not expect a larger crowd to gather yesterday than in other years and that, therefore, they did not deploy more personnel than usual in the area.
In fact, a large part of the police assets were distributed in various parts of the city, where political groups and activists had organized different demonstrations. “I am not sure of the exact number of officers deployed (to Itaewon), but a considerable number had been deployed to Gwanghwamun, where a large crowd was expected for a protest,” he told reporters.
That lack of preparation has already drawn numerous criticisms. This year’s Halloween celebrations were the first massive since 2019, due to the restrictions applied by the pandemic since 2020, and many already predicted a large turnout. “The alley was already bursting with people around three or four in the afternoon (about 6-7 hours before the tragedy occurred), so imagine how it was at 10 at night,” said an employee of an ice cream parlor from the area to the Efe agency.
The event is the deadliest in the country since the Sewol ferry capsized in 2014, an accident that killed 304 people, mainly high school students. After learning of the magnitude of the tragedy, leaders from around the world – the United States, China, Japan, France, Singapore, Great Britain, Canada, etc. – sent heartfelt messages of condolences and support to the victims, their families and the South Korean people.
Meanwhile, at the gates of exit 1 of Itaewon station, an improvised memorial has been set up in which citizens deposit various offerings such as flowers, candles and messages. “I hope you can go to a better world and realize your dreams,” reads one of them.
