Halloween crush: Police seek charges against officials

• The Itaewon accident happened due to lack of safety precautions.
• Police in South Korea are seeking charges against 23 officials.
• Last year’s crowd surge left about 160 people dead.

The Itaewon accident in Seoul’s nightlife zone, which resulted in the deaths of close to 160 individuals, was attributed by investigators to a lack of safety precautions.
South Korea’s SEOUL Due to a lack of safety precautions, police in South Korea are seeking charges of involuntary murder and carelessness against 23 officials, including law enforcement officers. Last year’s crowd surge left about 160 people dead.

On the day of the crush, Seoul police had delegated 137 policemen to the capital’s nightlife neighbourhood Itaewon, despite expecting a crowd of more than 100,000 throughout the Halloween weekend. There were limited resources available for ensuring the safety of pedestrians since those cops were preoccupied with keeping an eye on drug usage and violent crimes.

The National Police Agency’s special investigation into the incident was led by Son Je-han, who announced on Friday that his team will now forward the matter to prosecutors. Two of the six people who have been detained have been nominated for indictment: Park Hee-young, the mayor of Seoul’s Yongsan district, and Lee Im-jae, the area’s former police chief.

The findings of the 74-day police investigation, which Son announced, mostly confirmed what was already obvious: that Yongsan police and government officials ignored pedestrian calls to police hotlines warning of a growing crowd hours before the surge on Oct. 29 turned deadly and failed to implement meaningful crowd control measures for the anticipated numbers of Halloween revellers.

Around 10 p.m., Son claimed, partygoers began toppling over and becoming crushed in a tight lane outside the Hamilton Hotel. The authorities failed to maintain effective control of the scene and allow emergency professionals to get to the injured in time.

At a news conference in Seoul, Son stated, “Improper assessment of the situation, the slow dissemination of information about the situation, inadequate cooperation between related institutions, and delays in rescue operations were among the overlapping failures that caused the high number of casualties.”
As the nation continues to struggle with dealing with its biggest calamity in in a century, it is uncertain whether the police investigation’s findings will be sufficient to quell popular rage and quell calls for government accountability.

Investigations of more prominent individuals, including Interior and Safety Minister Lee Sang-min and National Police Agency Commissioner General Yoon Hee-keun, who have received calls to quit, have been urged by opposition MPs and some victims’ relatives.

Son, however, stated that because it was challenging to prove the Interior and Safety Ministry, the National Police Agency, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government as directly responsible, the special investigation team will end its investigations into those organisations.

Some experts have referred to the crowding in Itaewon as a “man-made disaster” that could have been avoided by taking a few relatively easy steps, like hiring more police officers and government employees to monitor bottleneck points, enforcing one-way walk lanes and blocking narrow pathways, or temporarily closing Itaewon’s subway station to prevent large numbers of people from entering.

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