SEOUL: Shocked family members picked up bodies, parents searched for children and a country searched for answers Sunday after at least 153 others were crushed to death when a crowd in South Korea stormed an alley during Halloween festivities. President Yoon Suk-yeol declared an era of national mourning and designated Seoul’s popular Itaewon district as a crisis zone after Saturday night’s crisis.
“This news fell like lightning from the blue sky,” said one father who burst into tears as he retrieved his daughter’s frame from the morgue in the nation’s capital.
A crowd of mass celebration in Itaewon erupted in an alley, killing at least 153 people, with a maximum of twenty years, emergency officials said, adding that the death toll could rise.
Revelers, some still teenagers and many in Halloween costumes, were able to enjoy bars, nightclubs and restaurants where festivities spanned narrow and sometimes steep streets.
Instead, the street was filled with other people screaming for help, while rescuers desperately sought to release trapped bodies and perform CPR on others lying on the rubble-covered ground.
Choi Sung-beom, leader of the Yongsan fire station, told a briefing at the scene that 82 other people were injured, 19 of them seriously. Among the dead were 22 foreigners, he said.
Families and friends desperately sought to communicate about their loved ones at network centers converted into facilities for the dispossessed. At least 90 percent of patients were known by noon, with delays affecting some foreigners and teenagers who did not yet have identity documents, the Interior Ministry said.
Makeshift monuments began to appear near the site, with onlookers leaving flowers and notes.
President Yoon expressed his condolences to the victims and his most productive wishes for a speedy recovery of the many injured in one of South Korea’s worst disasters.
and the world’s worst stampedes in decades.
“It is indeed tragic,” he said in a statement, promising an investigation into the cause of the crisis. “A tragedy and crisis that don’t deserve to have happened happened in downtown Seoul last night. “
DISORDER, THEN CHAOS
South Korean mobile generation and gaming companies, as well as Kakao and NCSOFT, pulled their Halloween promotions after the tragedy, while amusement park Everland canceled Halloween-themed events. Many governments and regional organizations have cancelled or curtailed festivals and other celebrations.
The weight of partygoers came as Itaewon, a symbol of rampant nightlife in South Korea’s decades-long capital that is just beginning to thrive after more than two years of Covid-19 restrictions, with trendy restaurants and department stores replacing seedy establishments.
It is the first Halloween occasion in Seoul in 3 years in which restrictions and social distancing due to covid-19 are practically not applied. Many revelers wore masks and Halloween costumes.
Twenty-four hours earlier, there were already cautious signs that the festivities were attracting a harmful number of people, and those affected and their families questioned a blatant lack of crowd control.
Early Sunday, costumes and belongings were mixed with blood stains on the street. Survivors piled up
under emergency blankets amid a crowd of rescuers, police and media. — Reuters