SEOUL
\nSouth Korea\u2019s police chief has said that officers received multiple urgent reports of danger ahead of a deadly crowd crush at a Halloween event but their handling of them was \u201cinsufficient\u201d.
\nAt least 156 mostly young people were killed, and scores more injured, in a deadly crowd surge late Saturday at the first post-pandemic Halloween party in Seoul\u2019s popular Itaewon nightlife district.
\nAn estimated 100,000 people had flocked to the area, but because it was not an \u201cofficial\u201d event with a designated organiser, neither the police nor local authorities were actively managing the crowd.
\n\u201cThere were multiple reports to the police indicating the seriousness at the site just before the accident occurred,\u201d national police chief Yoon Hee-keun said.
\nPolice knew \u201ca large crowd had gathered even before the accident occurred, urgently indicating the danger,\u201d he said, acknowledging the way this information was handled had been \u201cinsufficient\u201d.
\nSeoul\u2019s interior minister on Tuesday became the first top official to make a clear apology to the public for the disaster, one of the worst ever in the country\u2019s history.
\n\u201cI would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere apologies to the public as the minister in charge of the people\u2019s safety for this accident,\u201d Lee Sang-min said before bowing his head before lawmakers and cameras.
\nHe promised to investigate what had caused the crowd crush and ensure a disaster on this scale could never happen again.
\nSouth Korea is typically strong on crowd control, with protest rallies often so heavily policed that officers can outnumber participants.
\nBut police deployed only 137 officers to Itaewon for Halloween, while 6,500 officers were present at a protest across town attended by about 25,000 people, local reports said.
\nSouth Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said the country needed to urgently improve its system for managing large crowds in the wake of the disaster.
\n\u201cThe safety of the people is important, whether or not there is an event organiser,\u201d he told a cabinet meeting.
\nHe called for the country to develop \u201ccutting-edge digital capabilities\u201d to improve crowd management — but critics claim such tools already exist and were not deployed in Itaewon.
\nSeoul\u2019s City Hall has a real-time monitoring system that uses mobile phone data to predict crowd size, but it was not employed Saturday night, local media reported.
\nItaewon\u2019s district authorities also did not deploy any safety patrols, with officials saying the Halloween event was considered \u201ca phenomenon\u201d rather than \u201ca festival\u201d, which would have required an official plan for crowd control.
\nOn the night, tens of thousands of people thronged a narrow alleyway, with eye-witnesses describing how, with no police or crowd control in sight, confused partygoers pushed and shoved, crushing those trapped in the lane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL South Korea\u2019s police chief has said that officers received multiple urgent reports of danger ahead of a deadly crowd crush at a Halloween event but their handling of them was \u201cinsufficient\u201d. At least 156 mostly young people were killed, and scores more injured, in a deadly crowd surge late Saturday at the first post-pandemic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-292964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n