Exclusive November 16, 2022 at 7:36 pm EST Videos posted online show the streets of Itaewon in Seoul overnight on October 29, when a deadly crowd crush occurred during Halloween celebrations. (Video: @limesarah1 via TikTok; @iwanderlista via TikTok; @reggiebabie via TikTok) Comment on this story Comment For nearly four hours before people began dying during a Halloween celebration in Seoul’s Itaewon district, attendees begged police to divert crowds filling World Food Street and pushing into a narrow 16-foot-wide — a narrow, sloping space where most 158 lives will be lost in a horrific crash. And once this crash began, it took at least 26 minutes for emergency personnel to begin the effective evacuation of people. Some victims were trapped for more than an hour before rescuers arrived. The delays proved disastrous. A Washington Post analysis of more than 350 videos and photos, some obtained exclusively and many reviewed by experts at The Post’s request, found that several critical factors contributed to the tragedy and death toll in Itaewon on the night of October 29. Satellite © 2022 CNES / Airbus / Maxar Technologies /Airbus Satellite © 2022 CNES / Airbus / Maxar Technologies /Airbus Namhansanseong Provincial Park Satellite © 2022 CNES / Airbus / Maxar Technologies /Airbus The Post, which also reviewed emergency call logs and interviewed dozens of witnesses, found that the alley became dangerously crowded starting at 6:28 p.m. The first of at least 13 Emergency calls came minutes later to warn of escalating chaos, with people wedged in so tightly there were already injuries. The video shot at 6:28 p.m. on October 29 shows that the narrow alley in Itaewon was already dangerously crowded, according to the expert review. (Video: @hyerinpark5 via TikTok) At 10:08 p.m., this momentum triggered the crash. Some police officers and others on the edge of the chaos tried in vain to redirect the crowd, according to video footage. At least 16 more emergency calls came in between 10:08 p.m. and 10:22 p.m., when the video shows five officers struggling to extricate unconscious victims. South Korea admits police crowd control was ‘inadequate’ before crash But it wasn’t until 10:39 p.m. that emergency personnel closed both ends of the strait — a delay of about half an hour that allowed pedestrian traffic to resume in the area, hampered rescue efforts and undoubtedly increased casualties. according to experts. Review of materials. Another 11 minutes passed before police responded, according to department records. The number of lives lost eventually surpassed that of recent crowd disasters at an outdoor concert in Houston and at a soccer stadium in Indonesia. Almost 200 people were injured. as of Tuesday, at least eight were still hospitalized. How police action in Indonesia led to deadly soccer field crash “This was the easiest scenario in terms of effective crowd control supervision and accident prevention,” said Young Ook Kim, an expert on crowd movement and spatial arrangement and behavior at Sejong University in Seoul. “If you just go to assess the site and discuss possible countermeasures, anyone with the instincts and experience could predict the situation.”
The genesis of the fatal crash Halloween weekend in Itaewon, a popular nightlife district in Seoul, usually attracts tens of thousands of young people. Most of the intense celebrations take place along World Food Street – a block of restaurants and bars – and the side streets that connect it to one of Itaewon’s main streets. With the coronavirus restrictions lifted, local businesses were expecting bigger crowds this year. “We’re planning to throw an epic Halloween party as it’s the first post-coronavirus Halloween. Let’s party till the sun comes up,’ one bar advertised. A refuge for many in Seoul, Itaewon is thinking about the future after the crowds crash The celebrations were in full swing by 10pm. that Saturday, they show videos, of crowds of men and women in suits walking up and down World Food Street and the narrow passage just west of the Hamilton Hotel. A DJ party was scheduled to take place at 108 Hip Hop Lounge, which is located across the street. Around 10:08 p.m., something changed in the packed crowd outside the club, video reviewed by the Post shows. People started screaming. Satellite © 2022 NAVER / SPOT / National Geographic Information Institute Satellite © 2022 NAVER / SPOT / National Geographic Information Institute Satellite © 2022 NAVER / SPOT / National Geographic Information Institute “This situation is already extremely serious,” noted Mark Breen, director of Safe Events, a firm that specializes in security planning for large-scale gatherings, who reviewed video provided by The Post. During the next 10 minutes, he saw evidence of crowd crush, a phenomenon that occurs when the density of a crowd crosses a critical threshold and its movement becomes almost fluid. Kim, who also reviewed the alley footage, saw the initial signs of the crush at 10:08 p.m. with some people crammed so tight they would have trouble breathing. Survivors Zara Lily, an English teacher, and Jinhyeong Yun, an ocean engineer, described the scene. “People were pushing into each other and many times there was a wave of pushing that made people fall forward and then back, like ocean waves,” Lily wrote in a message from the couple’s joint Instagram account. By 10:17 p.m., experts agreed, the crash had taken over. The added pressures on both ends of the strait only made it worse. From World Food Street to the north end, people continued to turn around, not knowing what was going on. The video shows that the street itself was so crowded at one point that a man tried to climb a sign on the back of the Hamilton Hotel to escape. Meanwhile, at the southern end of the alley, parties on the main street, as well as those just arriving from Itaewon subway station, were also pushing. Satellite © 2022 NAVER / SPOT / National Geographic Information Institute Satellite © 2022 NAVER / SPOT / National Geographic Information Institute Satellite © 2022 NAVER / SPOT / National Geographic Information Institute Footage shot between 10:17 and 22:21 shows crowds converging from both ends of a narrow street in Seoul’s Itaewon district, leading to a crowd crush. (Video: @limesarah1 via TikTok, @iwanderlista via TikTok) A few steps from the entrance of the Hip Hop club, videos show people being pushed hard into the crowd and writhing in pain. Many were visibly gasping for air. G. Keith Still, a visiting professor of crowd science at the University of Suffolk in England, told The Post that in those moments of panic, people “could be dying on their feet.” How to survive a crowd crash and why it can turn deadly According to Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo, businesses in the area had asked the city days earlier to require subway trains to bypass Itaewon station on the weekend due to concerns about the volume of people who often exit there. Seoul Transportation Corp. told The Post that he did not receive a formal request. Experts said closing the nearest exit to the alley would have eased some of the congestion on Oct. 29.
Failures in emergency response The most effective way to relieve a crowd crash or crowd collapse—the latter occurs when someone in the crowd falls and causes others to fall in turn, a domino effect—is to relieve the intense pressure by moving them away. people from the region as quickly as possible, experts say. In Itaewon, this meant the immediate removal of people from both ends of the strait. However, The Post’s analysis of available video shows it took between 26 and 31 minutes after the crash began for emergency personnel to to start doing it. By 10:22 p.m., people were already piling up on each other in the most congested part of the strait. The five police officers on the scene had difficulty reaching people and pulling them out due to the weight of the crowd, as available videos show. Meanwhile, a photo from the vantage point shows foot traffic continued from World Food Street, exacerbating congestion. Satellite © 2022 NAVER / SPOT / National Geographic Information Institute Satellite © 2022 NAVER / SPOT / National Geographic Information Institute Satellite © 2022 NAVER / SPOT / National Geographic Information Institute A handful of police officers try to pull crushed revelers from the crowd around 10:23 p.m. on October 29 in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul. (Video: @lorna.talion1122 via TikTok and Reddit) Itaewon Police Sgt. Kim Baek-gyeom realized something was wrong when he and two junior officers heard screams from the area as they responded to an unrelated call. He radioed for backup, then he and another officer ran down World Food Street to try to stop more people from entering the alley. “There were so many people who were put off by it [street]continued to put pressure on the scene, making it even more difficult to evacuate people from the pile,” he told South Korea’s Hankyoreh newspaper. Kim said he briefly considered whether to run to his compound for a loudspeaker, then decided the situation was too dire. His desperation as he begged everyone to turn around was captured in a mash-up video which has since gone viral.
