Tears and rage. The president of South Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, inaugurated this Monday a monument in memory of the victims of the Halloween stampede in Seoul, whose death toll already amounts to at least 154 dead, while criticism against the authorities. They are accused of laxity in managing the crowd the night of the tragedy.
About 100,000 people, mostly in their 20s, dressed for the party, gathered in Itaewon on Saturday. This “fashionable” neighborhood of bars and nightclubs is made up of a labyrinth of narrow streets with steep slopes along a main avenue. Witnesses described a complete absence of measures aimed at channeling or controlling this large crowd.
More police…
However, a larger number of police officers had been mobilized in this event, compared to previous years: 137 police officers had been deployed in Itaewon on Saturday, compared to 37 to 90 police officers in the pre-COVID-19 years, from 2017 to 2019, underlines. Korea Time. It was the first time that this party had been resumed since the start of the pandemic.
However, the authorities were mainly in charge of controlling drug use and other illicit actions, less managing the crowd, the newspaper reports.
“I was told that the police officers at the scene did not detect any sudden increase in the crowd,” said Hong Ki-hyun, head of the Public Order Management Office of the National Security Agency of the police, regretting his trial. He also acknowledged that there were no crowd control measures in place in the narrow alley where the disaster occurred.
… but there are no control measures
On social media, many users accuse the police of failing to fully control the crowd, leaving too many people gathered around the Itaewon subway station and in the alleys where the deadly stampede took place.
Authorities are also blamed for failing to ban vehicles on parts of Itaewon’s main roads and failing to provide safe meeting space in advance, according to reports. the korean times.
“The management of flows, the presence of many people in the same place, requires access control upstream”, such as ticket sales terminals at the entrance of festivals, Julien Pettre, director of investigation of the ‘INRIA, expert in crowd simulation. “Without that, things are much more difficult” to understand, particularly because “there is a lack of knowledge about the number of people who are going to arrive.”
However, the South Korean police are masters of crowd control, in a country where the numerous and frequent demonstrations are often supervised by a greater number of officers than the participants. But the organizers of political or union demonstrations are obliged to declare their plans to the authorities in advance, which was not the case for the young people who turned out in great numbers to participate in the Halloween party in Itaewon.
“A large number of people were expected to gather”
Either way, the stampede “was not a problem that could have been solved by deploying police or firefighters in advance,” Interior Minister Lee Sang-min said at a news conference on Sunday.
“A large number of people were expected to gather here. But we did not expect so many casualties due to the gathering of so many people,” Hong Ki-hyun said. He also notes that this year’s Halloween crowd was similar in number to previous years or only slightly larger. Therefore, the authorities are trying to understand what could have triggered the murderous mass movement this time.
“Most crowds go well,” explains Julien Pettre, but “a multitude of factors can trigger a crowd movement.” In a crowded environment, one person’s panic can have disastrous effects, because “when you see people running in the same direction, you tend to do the same.” This is where potentially dramatic cascading incidents can occur.
“A tragedy and a disaster that should not have happened”
Witnesses described scenes of chaos and horror in the sloping alley just three meters wide, where thousands of revelers began to push each other, fall on each other, suffocate and panic.
Deploring “a tragedy and disaster that should not have happened,” South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol declared national mourning. Many concerts and other festive events were canceled and flags were lowered across the country.
The president promised that his government will investigate “rigorously” to determine the causes of the disaster, one of the most serious in South Korea’s recent history, and to ensure that a tragedy like this “does not happen again.” The police also promised to implement additional surveillance measures to better determine the necessary interventions in the event of large crowd concentrations in the future.
Source: BFM TV
