South Korea’s PM urges police to explain lack of action hours before Itaewon crowd deaths

SEOUL – South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo vowed on Wednesday to hold police accountable for Seoul’s deadly Halloween crowd surge, after a log of emergency calls showed the authorities were slow to respond.

Emergency call transcripts showed Seoul police had nearly four hours of warning that crowds were growing dangerously large.

“The police must conduct thorough inspections and provide a clear and transparent explanation to the public,” Mr Han said at the televised beginning of a task force meeting on the disaster.

The police have acknowledged

they did not do enough to heed warnings that gatherings were growing to dangerous levels.

There were 11 calls from near or at the alley where the deadly incident took place.

The earliest call came at 6.34pm local time, and the incident unfolded at about 10.15pm.

“There are a lot of people going up and down the alley, I’m very nervous,” the earliest caller said. “People might be crushed since they cannot come down, but people keep coming up. I barely escaped. There are too many people. I think you should take control,” said the person, whose name was not released.

A series of other calls then followed, with several coming between 8pm and 10pm. At 10.11pm, a person phoned to say: “I feel like I’m about to be crushed.” The caller then screamed.

The crowd crush killed 156 people and injured 151, leaving 29 in serious condition. At least 26 citizens from 14 countries were among the dead.

Those killed in the crush were trapped in an alley 3.2m wide that linked a main street in the Itaewon neighbourhood to an area filled with restaurants, bars and nightclubs. 

The government’s response is shaping up as one of the biggest tests for President Yoon Suk-yeol, who came into office in May and has seen his support slump in recent months.

South Korea has launched an investigation into the country’s worst disaster since the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014 killed 304 people, leading to criticism of the government for its emergency response.

President Yoon was outraged that the police took no action after receiving the calls about the dangerous crowd levels, Yonhap News Agency said, citing an official at his office. 

Opposition Members of Parliament have called for the immediate dismissal of the national police chief and the interior minister.

Some 137 officers were in the area for the Halloween festivities last Saturday night, which attracted about 100,000 people.

The majority of officers were there mainly for crime prevention, according to Yonhap. A police station sits a few blocks from the scene. 

Dr Milad Haghani, an expert on crowd behaviour and emergency preparedness, said if officers on the ground are not put in charge of controlling the flow of people, they would probably not intervene because that is not in their purview.

“As soon as you see this density happening, there should be an interruption to the inflow of the people into the restricted space,” said Dr Haghani, a senior lecturer at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Prime Minister Han said at a briefing with foreign reporters on Tuesday that the lack of sufficient crowd management may have caused the incident, adding that a full review was ongoing. BLOOMBERG, REUTERS