Dozens dead after Seoul crowd surge

At least 149 people were killed and 150 others were injured in a stampede during Halloween festivities in Seoul, officials said of one of the biggest disasters in South Korea that will likely raise serious questions about public safety standards.

The massive death toll is being tallied after people were crushed by a large crowd pushing forward on a narrow alley in Seoul’s Itaewon neighbourhoods, a major leisure and night-life district in the capital.

Chief of Seoul’s Yongsan fire department, Choi Seong-beom, said the death toll could rise and that an unspecified number of injured were in critical conditions following the stampede in Itaewon on Saturday night.

He said 74 of the dead have been sent to hospitals while the bodies of the remaining 46 who had been kept on the streets were being transported to a nearby gym so that workers could identify them.

Seong-beom added that the bodies were being sent to hospitals or a gym, where bereaved family members could identify them. He earlier said most of the dead and injured are in their 20s.

More than 1,700 response personnel from across the country were deployed, including about 520 firefighters and 1,100 police officers and 70 government workers. The National Fire Agency said in a statement that all of Seoul’s available emergency workers have been mobilized.

An estimated 100,000 people gathered in Itaewon — near a former headquarters of U.S. military forces in an area known for trendy bars, clubs and restaurants — for the country’s biggest outdoor Halloween festivities since the pandemic began. The South Korean government eased COVID-19 restrictions in recent months.

One survivor said many people fell and toppled to one another “like dominos” after they were being pushed by other people at a narrow downhill alley near Itaewon’s Hamilton Hotel. The survivor surnamed Kim, said some people shouted “Help me!” and others were short of breath. Kim described being trampled by other people for about 1.5 hours before being rescued, according to the Seoul-based Hankyoreh newspaper.

Another survivor, named Lee Chang-kyu, said he saw about five to six men start pushing others before one or two began falling one by one at the start of the stampede, according to the newspaper.

The stampede is the biggest disaster since 304 people, mostly high school students, died in a ferry sinking in April 2014. The sinking exposed lax safety rules and regulatory failures as it was partially blamed on excessive and poorly fastened cargo and a crew poorly trained for emergency situations. Friday’s stampede will likely cause public criticism of government officials over what they’ve done to improve public safety standards since the ferry disaster.

TV footage and photos showed ambulance vehicles lined up in streets amid a heavy police presence and emergency workers moving the injured in stretchers. Emergency workers and pedestrians were also seen performing CPR on people lying in the streets. In one section, paramedics were seen checking the status of a dozen or more people who lied motionless under blue blankets.

In an interview with news channel YTN, Hwang Min-hyeok, one of the visitors to Itaewon, said it was shocking to see rows of bodies laid down in the alley near Hamilton Hotel. He said emergency workers were initially overwhelmed, leaving pedestrians struggling to administer CPR to the injured lying on the streets. People cried beside bodies, he said.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government issued emergency text messages urging people in the area to swiftly return home.

There were some deadly stampedes in South Korea in the past.

In 2005, 11 people were killed and around 60 others were injured in a pop concert stampede in the southern city of Sangju. In 1992, a teenage girl died and dozens of others were injured during a stampede at a Seoul concert by the U.S. pop group New Kids on the Block.