Tag: Seoul

It looks like personnel who will take the fall for the bungled police response to the Itaewon Crushing Disaster have been identified:

 The now-suspended police chief in the district of Yongsan has been booked for an investigation, along with the head of the Yongsan Ward office and two others, on charges of professional negligence resulting in death in connection with the deadly Itaewon crowd crush, officials said Monday. 

Police and fire authorities, and the Yongsan Ward office have been under fire following revelations that there had been warning signs before the deadly accident, but they did little to prevent it or to respond in a timely manner.

The investigation team said the four officials booked for a formal investigation are Lee Im-jae, who was relieved of duty as Yongsan Police Station chief following the crush; Yongsan Ward office chief Park Hee-young; senior emergency monitoring officer Ryu Mi-jin, who was in charge at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on the day of the accident; and chief of the Yongsan Fire Station Choi Seong-beom.

Police documents and investigation results have shown that about a dozen emergency calls came in warning of a dangerous level of overcrowding in Itaewon in the few hours leading up to the Oct. 29 crush that killed 156 Halloween partygoers, mostly people in their 20s.

The investigation team said a charge of negligence of duty has been additionally applied to Lee for allegedly having arrived at the accident site too late and belatedly informing the top police command of the emergency situation.

Choi, meanwhile, has been suspected of failing to promptly communicate with police and respond to the emergency, while Park has been accused of neglecting her duties to come up with sufficient crowd control planning and accident prevention measures for the big Halloween gatherings.

Ryu, meanwhile, has been accused of having been absent from her seat at the situation monitoring room on the night of the deadly crowd crush.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the blame is definitely being spread around to the police, government officials, and the fire department.

This response seems extremely slow considering there is a police station not very far from Itaewon Station:

A police squad first arrived at the scene of the Halloween crowd crush in Seoul nearly 85 minutes after the incident erupted, police data showed Sunday.

A total of five police squads affiliated with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) were mobilized on the day of the crowd crush in Seoul’s Itaewon district that killed at least 156 people, mostly those in their 20s, according to the data submitted by the SMPA to Rep. Lee Tae-won of the main opposition Democratic Party.

The No. 11 police squad first arrived at the scene at 11:40 p.m. on Oct. 29 under the instruction of Lee Im-Jae, a former chief of the Yongsan Police Station that includes the Itaewon neighborhood. The first call to the police’s 112 emergency hotline was made around 10:15 p.m.

Four other squads arrived at the scene one by one, starting from 11:50 p.m. on Oct. 29 to 1:14 a.m. on Oct. 30, according to the SMPA data.

Lee — temporarily suspended from his post — was also found to have arrived at the Itaewon police substation at 11:05 p.m., some 50 minutes after the crush happened.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

If anyone deserved a Soldier’s Medal it is these three U.S. troops from Camp Casey. I like the comment from one of the survivors that the one large Soldier was pulling people out of the alley like he was picking radishes from a field:

 A trio of foreign heroes praised for saving more than 30 lives from last Saturday’s tragic crowd crush in Seoul turned out to be American soldiers stationed in South Korea, some survivors said Thursday.

One of the survivors, known only as a twentysomething man living in Cheongju, central South Korea, told Yonhap News Agency he believes the three foreign heroes are U.S. soldiers serving in Camp Casey in Dongducheon, about 50 km north of Seoul.

The man told local media earlier he was pulled out of the chaos in a narrow alleyway in Itaewon before fainting and being carried to safety.

He said he is convinced the heroic Americans are Jarmil Taylor, 40, Jerome Augusta, 34, and Dane Beathard, 32, after belatedly learning of their interviews with French news agency AFP published Sunday.

He said he went to Itaewon on Saturday to enjoy the Halloween festivities with his friends but fell down in the crowd in the narrow alleyway before being crushed for about 15 minutes.

The Cheongju man, who is 182 cm tall and weighs 96 kg, said a strong black man rescued him from the crowd as if pulling radishes from a field.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The Seoul mayor was not even in the city when the tragedy occurred, but nevertheless I would not be surprised if the political opposition demands that he resign:

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon apologized Tuesday over the Halloween crowd crush that killed at least 156 people.

“As the mayor of Seoul who is responsible for the lives and safety of citizens, I feel infinite responsibility for the accident and express my deepest apologies,” Oh said in a tearful voice during a news conference at his office.

“The Seoul city government will do its best to mobilize all its administrative power until all funeral procedures are completed and the bereaved families, the injured and all citizens who feel sorrow from this accident can return to their daily lives.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Investigators are not only looking into the celebrity sighting, but who started the pushing in the alley and the Yongsan district police response as well:

At the center of the claims is a suspicion raised through social media and news interviews that some people on the upper side of the sloped alley cried “push, push” and thrust other people, resulting in the deadly crush. 

Allegations have also arisen that a massive crowd of people surged into the narrow alley to see a celebrity visiting the area at that time. 

According to police officials, a police investigation is currently under way into those claims, although no criminally punishable acts have been identified so far. 

Yonhap

There was a celebrity, K-Pop singer Lee Ji-han killed in the crush so maybe he was the celebrity that witnesses were referring to?

The article goes on to state that business owners that would not let people into their businesses to escape the crush would likely not face charges:

Nam Gu-jun, chief of the National Office of Investigation, said a 475-member special investigative team had interviewed 44 eyewitnesses as of Monday and secured 52 pieces of surveillance camera footage in 42 places around the scene to determine the exact cause of the accident. 

Videos posted on social media were also being scrutinized, he said. 

Some survivors have also claimed operators of stores along the alley blocked the entrances to people fleeing the crushing crowd, although experts said it would be nearly impossible to criminally punish them for “denying voluntary rescue.” 

Many expect the investigation could also be directed toward police in charge of the precinct and the municipal government of Yongsan that administers the Itaewon neighborhood for failing to carry out advance accident prevention measures in negligence of their safety management duties.

You can read the rest at the link, but the Hamilton Hotel will also be investigated for expanding the wall in the alleyway that made it even narrower than it already was.  

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.

The misinformation going around that the Yongsan police department was short handed due to providing presidential security quickly spread around the Internet after the Itaewon stampede tragedy. Now the police are trying to play catch up to get the truth out that they actually had more officers in Itaewon than past Halloween celebrations:

Halloween festivities in Itaewon have no official organizers. South Korean police said Monday they don’t have any specific procedures for handling incidents such as crowd surges during an event that has no organizers. 

Police said they dispatched 137 officers to maintain order during Halloween festivities on Saturday, much more than the 34-90 officers mobilized in 2017, 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic.

Citing those figures, police dismissed as “different from the truth” speculation that a police station in the area was understaffed because it was providing extra security for Yoon, who earlier moved the presidential office to a site near Itaewon. They said police-provided security for presidents has long been handled by two special police units which have nothing to do with the Yongsan police station, whose jurisdiction includes Itaewon.

ABC News

You can read more at the link, but the misinformation being put out was clearly an attempt to politicize the tragedy and blame it on President Yoon. If it got traction then it could help set up Yoon for impeachment much like what happened to former President Park Geun-hye who got blamed for the Sewol disaster during her presidency.