South Korea refers 23 officials to be charged over fatal crowd crush

SEOUL – South Korea’s police on Friday said a lack of preparations and an inadequate response were the main causes of the

deadly Halloween crush in Seoul last year

, wrapping up a months-long investigation into the tragedy

that killed 159 people

.

The annual festivities in the popular nightlife area of Itaewon turned deadly on Oct 29 after tens of thousands of young revellers crowded into narrow alleyways to celebrate the first Halloween free of Covid-19 curbs in three years.

The authorities, including the police, did not devise safety measures even though dense crowds made an accident likely, and did not take appropriate steps after calls for rescue started coming in, said Mr Sohn Je-han, who led the investigation.

“Misjudgement of the situation, delay in sharing information and lack of cooperation among related agencies accumulated to cause large casualties,” Mr Sohn said.

The investigation team has referred 23 people, including the head of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, to prosecutors.

No national government officials were referred to prosecutors.

The alley was located near an exit for a subway station and has been a heavily-used passage for pedestrian traffic moving between a main street in the area and the restaurants, bars and nightclubs on the other side.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has apologised over the deadly incident and called for the investigation that he said would hold those responsible to account. 

About 140 officers were deployed to the Itaewon nightlife area where the incident occurred, which was marking its first large-scale festivities in three years. Most of them were there mainly for crime prevention and the authorities have been faulted for not doing more to control the crowd. 

Experts say the density of people packed in a narrow and restricted alley may have reached a level that made such a disaster almost inevitable. Witnesses and media reports indicate that as people squeezed into the alley, some began to fall, causing others to tumble and pile onto one another.

Forces generated by crowd surges have been strong enough to bend steel bars, and the main cause of death is often asphyxiation, they said.

The bereaved families and opposition lawmakers have criticised the investigation for not holding top officials accountable.

“We have so many questions unanswered,” Mr Lee Jong-chul, head of a group representing the bereaved families, told reporters as he arrived at a prosecutors’ office in Seoul. “We came here to give a victim’s statement, expecting a better, expanded investigation.” REUTERS, BLOOMBERG