People are eager to blame someone for the Itaewon crowd crush disaster and the Korean police have become the main target:
According to police, 137 police officers were deployed in Itaewon on Saturday night. When asked whether there was enough police presence, Yoon Hee-keun, new head of the National Police Agency, said on Monday it was “difficult” to give a definite answer.
Multiple eyewitness accounts say there was little police presence to control the crowd. Viral clips on social media show people struggling to move quickly.
In a briefing on Sunday, Lee Sang min, Minister of Interior and Safety, said he understood that deploying police officers or firefighters in advance could not have “solved the problem.”
But Professor Choi Don-mook at the department of fire engineering at Gachon University told The Korea Herald there were several ways to respond to a growing crowd.
“When there are this many people, traffic must be closed off. Even if the turnout grew unexpectedly, (the authorities) could have checked CCTVs or even use drones and introduce one way traffic if necessary,” he said.
Minister Lee’s remark has also been criticized by the Lawyers for a Democratic Society, better known as Minbyun, as potentially downplaying the government’s safety management responsibility.
In a viral TikTok, Nathan Taverniti, an Australian survivor who survived the deadly crowd crush, said there was a “lack of planning police force and emergency services.”
“You know how many people were going to that event. Why were you not prepared?” he said in the clip.
Steven Belsi, the father of an American student who died in the crowd crash, told NBC News that the South Korean police should have been better prepared.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link, but in my opinion the simple thing that could have prevented what happened was to shutdown the Itaewon subway station. The tragedy happened just across the street from the train station. People were undoubtedly moving to and from the clubs and the train station using the narrow alley where the tragedy occurred. Closing Itaewon station may have caused less overcrowding in that area if people had to walk further to get into Itaewon from other stations.
With that all said if people really want to find who is to blame, then determine who started the initial pushing at the top of the slope that caused people to fall on top of each other in the alley.
