For many, the Itaewon Halloween festivities sounded like a great way to celebrate the loosening of the COVID-19 restrictions. A weekend of enjoyment that couldn’t be done at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with festive streets covered with fellow merry-goers, was a return to normalcy. Those out on October 29th could not imagine that the day would turn into one of the greatest losses of life in Korean history. The problems started during the early evening. Between 6 PM and 10 PM, over 63,000 people entered Itaewon via the Metro system alone, with a total of 130,000 people exiting Itaewon station throughout the day. The narrow, winding streets of Itaewon, much of it being built before proper city planning or regulation, quickly became overcrowded to dangerous levels. At 6:34 PM, the first call to the emergency services about overcrowding and potentially fatal crushing would be made. It would soon be followed by many more.
At 10 PM, it would finally reach a breaking point. At a side street behind the Hamilton Hotel, a bottleneck would form in the middle of the sloped, narrow passageway, making it impossible for the people trapped there to move. During the next few minutes, more and more people would be forced into the bottleneck, with groups of people cascading into each other like dominoes as some lost their footing.These mass falling events would prove to be fatal. For the people in the center, the force of the wave of human bodies crashing down the sloped passage would be equivalent to 18 tons per second of impulse, more than the human body could bear. Even worse, the people in the back could not understand the severity of the situation below, slowing the crowd’s response. By the time the crowds yelled to back up and exited the side street, the damage had been done; as a result of the crush, 159 people would die and a further 196 would be injured.
The horrifying incident made headlines worldwide as one of the worst crowd crushes in recent memory. There could be only one question in the minds of not only survivors and the families of the deceased, but the nation as well; who, or what was responsible for this? The first fingers would be pointed at an individual. Early in the aftermath of the incident, there were reports of an instigator, “a man wearing rabbit headbands.” A video of the incident went viral on Twitter, with a person or a group of people shouting “push, push,” and the instigator theory, as well as the video, was widely publicized in the media. However, expert opinions differed on the matter. Professor Yeom Geun-woong of U1 university, as well as many other experts warned against attributing a societal incident to an individual, stating that the crowd in crowd crushes behaved like a fluid, and that individuals do not have much control. With the so-called “man with the rabbit headbands” being called into police questioning, then subsequently being acquitted of all charges, the instigator theory would peter down.
Then, another, more insidious opinion would rear its head. Instead of the police or the government being responsible, some people started to claim that the victims themselves were responsible. According to them, the incident was a natural consequence of too many partygoers trying to party it up, and that no one could be blamed for the consequences of their actions. Furthermore, they compared the victims to service members, a common rhetoric by the far-right, belittling the victims by stating that they didn’t even die trying to defend their country, but to have fun, and claiming that the families making a fuss about it were doing so for monetary gain. These opinions were not just parroted by the Internet trolls; senators and representatives from the ruling People’s Power Party as well as influential right-wing YouTubers with a large number of followers have openly stated some or all these opinions as well.
Of course, this is a preposterous idea. However, this sort of rhetoric is not rare; in fact, there is another example of this sort of rhetoric in a remarkably similar incident, the Hillsborough disaster. The Hillsborough disaster happened in South Yorkshire, England, in 1989 when a popular match between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool turned into a fatal crushing incident after the police erroneously permitted the crowds to enter via exit gates, causing 79 deaths and 766 injuries. After the incident, however, the responsible South Yorkshire Police (SYP) would claim that the hooliganism and excessive drinking of Liverpool fans were the cause of the incident, and denied wrongdoing. Because of this, the victims were only properly recognized in 2017, some 28 years after the incident.
It’s very easy to see the parallels between the rhetoric of the SYP and the rhetoric against the victims of the Itaewon disaster. Both are a transparent attempt to discredit the victims by implying the immorality of the victims as the cause of the tragedy. However, this is untrue in both cases. The Hillsborough disaster was cited as a case of police misconduct in the Taylor report, a 1990 inquiry of the case by Lord Justice Taylor, as well as by the second coroner’s inquest in 2012. This is much the same in the Itaewon disaster; it was not only filled with police and government misconduct, but completely preventable as well.
First, the Itaewon disaster was not an unpredictable incident. The Itaewon Halloween festivities are a well-known event to the Yongsan Police department. The department had annually prepared for the event prior to 2022, and had even prepared for crowd crushes in 2021. Despite the much smaller turnout, and the focus on enforcement of COVID-19 protocols last year, the very street where the crushing happened had been stationed with five officers as well as a civil servant from the Yongsan district hall. The streets behind the Hamilton Hotel were known to be overcrowded, so much so that that the police were stationed in 7 out of the 10 spots in that area.
Even without preparation, the police had ample opportunity to stop the incident. On that day, Seoul police had been deployed to corral the protests around the city, including those by Korean Trade Unionists as well as political protests with only 138 policemen were assigned to Itaewon. The police officers in the field had called for reinforcements as early as 7:30 PM but were denied, because the protests had been given priority. Even after the Seoul general dispatch had declared
emergency, or “Code 0,” after repeated calls from the area, no steps were taken to transfer any additional officers into the area, despite some protests being as close as 1.4 km from Itaewon.
And even after the crushing incident, there could have been ways to minimize the casualties. However, the command structure had been completely ineffectual in the precious minutes and hours after the incident. Though some officials were aware of the situation minutes after the incident, it took almost an hour for higher command to be alerted. The most egregious example is the case of the Minister of Interior and Safety. Despite protocol dictating to immediately report to him, he had only been made aware of the situation around an hour and a half after the incident, or 20 minutes after the president had been notified.
The Itaewon disaster was a preventable tragedy, and the one we must learn from. To blame the victims would not only be causing secondary harm to those most affected, but also a refusal to learn from this tragedy. Efforts must be focused on determining the cause of the issue and preventing similar incidents, as well as justice for the victims.
Min jeong-ung (News Editor)
redreboot@soongsil.ac.kr
