The Night It Happens

oul crowd crush: How tragedSaturday night in Seoul's Itaewon district on Oct 29, the weekend before Halloween.Massive crowds had gathered for the first Halloween festivities in three years, after South Korea lifted COVID-19 restrictions.

The revelry spilled over into Itaewon's narrow and often steep side streets.

One particularly narrow and sloping alley, next to Hamilton Hotel, was already packed wall to wall.

But people at the top of the alleyway continued pouring in.

Caught in the crush, people shouted, cried and cursed.

Some tried to scale the sides of buildings to escape the increasing pressure.

And then people began to fall.

When those at the top of the slope fell, it sent people below them toppling over others.

"Everybody just fell on top of each other like dominoes," said Jarmil Taylor, an off-duty American soldier based in South Korea, who was caught up in the crowd surge.

"There were people on top of people - it was layers of people. They didn't have enough people there to help them at once."

Survivors said they were trapped for more than an hour before being pulled from the crush of people in the alley.

Taylor and two other off-duty soldiers, Dane Beathard and Jerome Augusta, were among those who tried to help.

"All of the people crushed were in the front, where they collapsed into a pile," Beathard said. He added that at the worst points, it was "a fifteen-foot layer of people".

Smaller-sized survivors said they had struggled more in the crowd.

"A short person like me could not even breathe," a woman said, adding that she survived as she was at the edge of the alleyway while "people in the middle suffered the most".

Authorities said the majority of victims were young women in their 20s.

Lee Beom-suk, a doctor who administered first aid to the victims, described scenes of tragedy and chaos.

"When I first attempted CPR, there were two victims lying on the pavement. But the number exploded soon after, outnumbering first responders at the scene. Many bystanders came to help us with CPR," he said in an interview with local broadcaster YTN.

"It's hard to put in words to describe," he added.

"So many victims' faces were pale. I could not catch their pulse or breath and many of them had a bloody nose.

"When I tried CPR, I also pumped blood out of their mouths."

At least 156 people have been confirmed dead.

Among them are foreigners from 14 countries, including China, Iran, Uzbekistan and Norway.

151 others were injured, with 29 of them in critical condition.

As many as 100,000 people, mostly in their teens and 20s, turned up for the Halloween festivities.

Police said they deployed 137 officers to Itaewon for Halloween, while sending 6,500 to a protest across town.

South Korea's police chief has acknowledged that officers received multiple urgent reports of danger ahead of the crowd crush in Itaewon, and that their handling of the information was "insufficient".  

Experts speaking to CNA noted that the crowd was so densely packed in the 4m-wide alley that any slight movement at its fringes could have caused the whole crowd to collapse.

“Unfortunately, under those circumstances, as the crowd falls over, people then try to get up, arms and legs get twisted together,” said Keith Still, visiting professor at the University of Suffolk, who has more than 30 years of experience in crowd safety and crowd risk analysis.

They explained that what happened in Itaewon should not be described as a stampede, as that implies that there was space available for people to move.

"When the crowd reaches that level of critical density, no individual in the crowd is essentially in charge of their actions or their movements," said Dr Milad Haghani of University of New South Wales in Australia.

"No person can decide where to go or how to react."

On the question of what South Korean authorities should focus on in their investigations, Prof Still noted that the size of the Itaewon alley, the flow rate through the area, the maximum limits, and the fact that there is a train station in the area are known parameters.

“You can therefore work out what the safety elements are before you allow the crowds into that space. So that, I think, would be your fundamental analysis - understanding the areas and then look at who's responsible for the safety of the public,” he said.

“Is this (on the) local authorities? Who's the landowner in these areas? What is the legislation for public safety within this environment? These are all key questions you would ask in an inquiry.”

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