Tag: Seoul

It has been a cold December in South Korea:

The Han River in Seoul was declared frozen by South Korea’s state weather agency for the first time this winter Sunday, as a cold snap has continued for days.

The first freeze of the river was observed on the river running through the capital city more than two weeks earlier than previous years, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA).

According to the KMA, the river is officially frozen when it has thick ice in a 100-meter-long area between the Han River Bridge’s second and fourth piers. The bridge links Yongsan Ward and Dongjak Ward

In previous winters, the first freeze on the river was declared around Jan. 10. Last winter, the Han River never officially froze.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This drunken idiot gets to experience the full extent of the Korean court system:

A member of the United States Forces Korea (USFK) has been arrested after beating up a taxi driver so badly that the victim could not work for a number of days, according to the police in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province on Sunday.

The aggressor’s attack was recorded by a black-box video camera installed inside the taxi at about 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 27. He threw punches at the victim, who is 58 years old, using both arms as the driver took the beating whilst trying to guard his head with his hands.

The American then returned to Seoul Air Base in Seongnam, right across the road from where the incident happened. The aggressor left his wallet on the back seat of the taxi, where his identification card was found. Officers from Seongnam Sujeong Police Station arrived at the scene after the soldier fled the scene. The authorities said that they will call in the aggressor to the police station for questioning.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the assault happened after the Soldiers credit card was declined for payment. The driver for his part is smartly playing up his injuries as much as possible trying to get as much money from the U.S. military as he can.

Even more police officers and other officials are being charged for not doing their jobs properly the night of the Itaewon crowd crush disaster:

A total of nine police officers and government officials were additionally booked Wednesday for an investigation into the bungled response to the crowd crush in Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood, police said.

Among those on the list are Park Sung-min, a superintendent general, and Song Byung-joo, a former emergency monitoring officer at Yongsan Police Station, as well as four other intelligence officers, they said. 

Park is under suspicion of ordering the deletion of an internal intelligence report giving prior warnings of a possible safety accident during the Halloween period in a suspected attempt to cover up inaction. A superintendent general is the fourth-highest rank in the police.

Also on Wednesday, Song, who was in charge of the police’s 112 emergency hotline in Yongsan Ward covering the Itaewon district, was quizzed by a special investigation team earlier in the day on whether he had promptly reported the situation to Lee Im-jae, who formerly headed the station.

Lee earlier testified during a parliamentary audit that he learned of the accident at around 11 p.m., around 45 minutes after the incident first erupted, claiming the emergency hotline chief had earlier reported to him that nothing unusual was going on.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

A USFK servicemember and his wife described recently to the Stars & Stripes what it was like to be in the middle of the Itaewon crowd crush disaster:

“Everybody acts like we were supposed to know that this was happening,” Riley Watts said. “Nobody knew.”

‘Like being in water’

As the crowd grew and space on the sidewalk became scarce, the Wattses were surrounded by people who were unintentionally “pushing really hard,” the couple said.

The force of so many people together “would pick me up without me even trying to move,” Riley Watts said, and his feet left the ground.

“It was kind of like being in water; it was just pushing us down the road,” he said.

Amid panicked screams in the crowd, Riley Watts saw a girl fall, he said.

“I reached down to get her and she put her hand in mine, but when I tried to pull her up, she wouldn’t budge,” he said. “And she was on the ground and when the crowd surged, it pushed her down away from me and pushed me away from her.”

Riley said he does not know what became of the girl.

“People were screaming at me, ‘Stop pushing me; I can’t breathe,’” he said. “And I was telling them, ‘It’s not me; I’m not doing it.’”

The couple soon realized that hunting for open space in the crowd was a dangerous task, according to Allyson Watts. As soon as open space materialized, people rushed so quickly into it that it became a “stumbling risk,” she said.

“If there was a sudden opening … then you risked falling over,” she said.

The Wattses eventually got off the sidewalk and onto the street because “it was the only place that was clear,” Allyson added.

“I would rather be in front of a car at that point rather than what we were up against,” Riley Watts said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but I am still waiting for someone to figure out who started the reported pushing at the top of the slope that caused the disaster to happen.

The fact that the pro-North Korea Minbun group is involved shows how these lawyers plan to use the Itaewon crush tragedy to politically attack the Yoon administration:

The bereaved families of some Itaewon crowd crush victims held a news conference Tuesday, calling for the punishment of those responsible for the tragic accident.

The conference was organized in southern Seoul by Minbyun-Lawyers for a Democratic Society, an organization of progressive lawyers, which it says legally represents the families of 34 of 158 people killed during and after Halloween celebrations in Seoul’s Itaewon district on Oct. 29.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Minbyun for those that don’t remember has been used to legally attack North Korean defectors, one of the groups behind the US beef riots, and have long attacked the USFK relocation plan. They have recently been calling for the signing of a peace treaty to end the Korean War so US troops can be withdrawn:

You would think higher apartment buildings with more apartments in them would help with the affordable housing issues in Seoul:

Seoul’s skyline is set to rise higher as residents push to have their buildings demolished and taller buildings put in their place.  
   
A union representing owners of Sinbanpo 2-cha apartment complex in Jamwon-dong, southern Seoul, wants to raze the existing 12-story apartments and have 49-story structures built.    
   
The apartment complex, completed in 1978, is one of the oldest in Seoul. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but buildings on the Han River are currently capped at 15 floors and other buildings in Seoul are capped at 35 floors with two exceptions for the 56-story high Raemian Caelitus in Ichon-dong, Yongsan and the 47-story Seoul Forest Trimage in Seongsu-dong.

The Washington Post has an article published that takes a very detailed look at the Itaewon crowd crush disaster:

For nearly four hours before people started dying during a Halloween celebration in Seoul’s Itaewon district, partygoers pleaded with police to divert the crowds that were packing World Food Street and pushing into a 16-foot-wide alley — a tight, sloping space where most of 158 lives would be lost in a gruesome crush.

And once that crush began, it took at least 26 minutes for emergency personnel to start effectively evacuating people. Some victims were trapped for more than an hour before rescuers reached them. The delays proved catastrophic.

A Washington Post analysis of more than 350 videos and photos, some obtained exclusively and many reviewed by experts at The Post’s request, found that multiple critical factors contributed to the tragedy and death toll in Itaewon on the night of Oct. 29.

Washington Post

You can read more at the link, but really I only learned two new things from the article. First is that 119 calls were being placed about people being injured due to overcrowding in the alley almost four hours before people died. There was police officers there trying to redirect the crowd before the crush happened. However, there was not enough of them to stop more people from entering the alley.

What the article does not answer is who was the group reports claimed was pushing people on top of the slope? Was there really a Korean celebrity sighting that triggered the pushing? Hopefully someone figures that out because the alley was over capacity for almost four hours before the pushing caused it to turn tragic.