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Itaewon in Seoul is a long street lined with cafes, restaurants and bars. The district is best known as a nightlife district and is particularly popular with foreigners. Many small streets branch off the main street, from which it is practically impossible to escape when there is a crowd. This is exactly what happened at a Halloween party on Saturday night: the alley involved was only 45 meters long and four meters wide and sloped down to the main street and the train station.
“There was just a wave of people coming in, it’s in the middle of Itaewon, waves of people and I lost my friends,” Australian Nathan Taverniti told journalists yesterday. Even those people who still recognized the danger found it difficult to free themselves from the crowd. Numerous people fell to the ground while others pushed from above, eyewitnesses reported. Many of the victims were crushed, suffocated or trampled on.
A total of at least 154 people are believed to have died and a further 130 are said to have been injured, some seriously. One Austrian was among the 26 foreigners killed. The foreign office in Vienna announced that the man was visiting the South Korean capital. “Our embassy in Seoul is in contact with the responsible authorities and relatives in Austria and will support them in all further steps.” Among other things, out of consideration for the relatives, no further information will be given.
“It was like a domino effect”
“It was like a domino effect,” a young witness told South Korean TV station MBC. “I lost my balance and fell down too.” He didn’t want to step on recumbents. “People were unconscious or were calling for help.”
The first reports from the scene of the accident said that many people had suffered cardiac arrest in a crowd. Rescue workers and private individuals tried to revive her. “There were people lying on the street at the intersection who were being resuscitated,” said Karl Sunglao from California, who works as an English teacher in Seoul, the dpa. When he and his girlfriend came out of the subway station at around 11 p.m. on Saturday (local time) to celebrate, they initially thought a building had collapsed. “It was absolutely crowded, we didn’t know what was going on.”
National mourning until Friday
The exact circumstances of the tragedy remained unclear for the time being. According to eyewitness reports, the alleys around the accident site were so crowded that the rescue workers had difficulty making their way through the crowds and reaching the victims. President Yoon Suk-yeol saw the scene of the accident for himself in the morning. He spoke of a tragedy and catastrophe that should not have happened. The President declared national mourning until Friday and pledged all support, both psychological and financial, to the relatives.
Interior Minister Lee Sang-Min dismissed criticism that the authorities failed because they failed to control the crowds in a timely manner. The Halloween party was not a registered event and the masses could not have been prevented by more police.
The annual Halloween festival is one of the largest public celebrations in South Korea’s capital. This year, larger events for the festival took place for the first time after the corona measures were largely relaxed. According to the reports, tens of thousands of people were drawn to the Itaewon district. “Itaewon is extremely crowded every year but this year was just crazy,” one woman wrote on an Instagram story. According to the reports, rumors were circulating that a prominent YouTuber was on his way to a club on the affected street or had already arrived there. That attracted a lot of people again.
Source: Nachrichten
