Two ex-police officers detained over deadly Halloween crush

• According to South Korean officials, two former police officers were detained on Monday on suspicion of erasing evidence in connection with the fatal Halloween crowd crush in Seoul.
• They allegedly gave their subordinates the order to trash a report that discussed the dangers of a big throng amassing in Itaewon for Halloween celebrations.
• Due to how they handled the Itaewon event, the two cops were previously fired from their positions in November.

According to South Korean officials, two former police officers were detained on Monday on suspicion of erasing evidence in connection with the fatal Halloween crowd crush in Seoul.

In connection with an ongoing investigation into the disaster that claimed 158 lives in October, former intelligence agents Park Sung-min of the Seoul Metropolitan Government and Kim Jin-ho of the Yongsan Police have been taken into custody.

They allegedly gave their subordinates the order to trash a report that discussed the dangers of a big throng amassing in Itaewon for Halloween celebrations.

Due to how they handled the Itaewon event, the two cops were previously fired from their positions in November. Prosecutors now have 10 days to bring charges under the provisions of the arrest warrants for the couple that were issued by a Seoul court on Monday.

Tens of thousands of revellers descended to Seoul’s Itaewon area on October 29 to celebrate Halloween, and the majority of those slain in the throng were young people and teenagers. The congested, narrow streets caused many people to become trapped, and survivors and witnesses report that there was little crowd control or police presence until it was too late.

On Monday, the court also rejected arrest warrants for Song Byung-joo, a former emergency monitoring officer, and Lee Im-jae, the station chief and former Yongsan Police officer. Regarding the crowd crush that resulted in fatalities and injuries, both are suspected of professional carelessness.

The court rejected the warrants, citing a little probability of Lee and Song erasing evidence or escaping. They are still being looked into.

A special police team was established to investigate what went wrong after the disaster, and officers raided police stations and offices all throughout the capital to gather internal police reports and records of emergency calls.

These call logs show that the police received at least 11 progressively urgent emergency calls for crowd control and then rescuers. At least four hours before the catastrophe took place, the first calls started to come in.

Since then, public outrage and calls for accountability have grown, with some demanding for President Yoon Suk Yeol to be dismissed in light of the tragedy.

“I’m pleading with the politicians in this nation. You must be sincere if you truly care about the suffering of the bereaved. The mother of one victim, a 29-year-old, stated at a news conference on November 22 that “you need to perform a proper inquiry and apologise to our children.” She stated, while holding her son’s death certificate, that the precise reason, occasion, and location of his passing remained unknown.

At the news conference, other bereaved parents who were represented by the nonprofit organisation Minbyun discussed their own struggles with the procedure. One father claimed it took him 17 days to get in touch with other bereaved families and complained that the government wasn’t offering enough support.

An official from the presidential office responded to inquiries regarding those claims by stating that a thorough investigation “should be conducted” and that the government was considering offering additional comfort and compensation “if the scope of responsibility and the legal perpetrator are clarified.”

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