Seoul’s usually vibrant nightlife district of Itaewon stood unusually quiet last Saturday evening, marked by black and yellow crash barriers erected by South Korean police to control the flow of pedestrians. This precaution aimed to prevent a recurrence of the tragic Halloween stampede of the previous year that claimed the lives of 159 young people.
At the site of the disaster, where narrow streets and steep alleyways were transformed into a memorial, individuals laid flowers at a wall inscribed with handwritten messages to remember those who perished. A few kilometers away at Seoul Plaza, thousands attended a memorial service on the anniversary of the tragedy. They demanded a thorough investigation into the incident and an apology from the authorities.
Il-suk Oh, whose 25-year-old daughter Ji-min died in the stampede, expressed the need for truth and accountability. He stated, “We believe that even though our children are gone, the exact truth must be revealed. We need to know why the tragedy happened and why it wasn’t prevented.”
Halloween weekend in Itaewon had been drawing larger crowds each year since 2017, and the 2021 celebration, the first one free of coronavirus restrictions, was expected to be the biggest yet. Emergency services received warnings of the growing crowds hours before the stampede occurred. The estimated 100,000 attendees faced the disaster shortly after 10 p.m., resulting in hundreds of people piled on top of one another in multiple layers.
Emergency workers struggled to extract victims for first aid and resuscitation before transporting the dead and injured to 40 hospitals throughout the city. However, the families of victims have not received adequate information about the rescue operations, the victims’ locations, or the duration of their survival. They also raised concerns about discrepancies between official autopsy reports and data from smartwatches recording heartbeats of some victims during the tragedy.
Despite an official investigation into the incident, only lower-level officials faced prosecution. The families of the victims remain in the dark about the true cause of the stampede and call for legislation that guarantees the rights of disaster victims and mandates the government to conduct thorough fact-finding investigations.
Sun-mi Choi, whose daughter Ga-young was among the victims, recounted her family’s ordeal, including the initial misidentification of her daughter’s body as a “Jane Doe.” The families advocate for justice, the prevention of similar incidents in the future, and an end to what they perceive as the government’s victim-blaming tendencies.
The tragedy has sparked an ongoing dialogue about safety measures, the rights of disaster victims, and the government’s responsibility in ensuring the well-being of its citizens during mass gatherings and events.
