As South Korea mourns, officers are dealing with powerful questions on preparations for the celebrations and calls for for accountability. The nationwide authorities has insisted there was no solution to predict the gang would get uncontrolled.
Consultants disagree.
Deploying so few law enforcement officials, they mentioned, confirmed officers have been poorly ready regardless of figuring out forward of time that there can be an enormous gathering following the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in current months.
On prime of assigning extra personnel, police and officialsin the Yongsan district ought to have pedestrianised some streets and brought different measures to ease the crowding in slender lanes, consultants mentioned. As a substitute, the 137 officers in Itaewon have been assigned to watch crime, with a specific concentrate on narcotics use, which means that for all sensible functions “nobody was taking care of pedestrian security,” mentioned Kong Ha-song, adisaster prevention professor at Woosuk College. The deaths needs to be seen as a “artifical catastrophe,” mentioned Lee Changmoo, an city planning professor at Hanyang College. Authorities have come below comparable criticism in nationwide media and on social networks. The headline of an editorial within the Hankyoreh newspaper on Sunday described the tragedy as “all too avoidable. ”
Kong mentioned extra policeshould have been referred to as on to watch potential bottleneck pointsand authorities ought to have enforced one-way strolling lanes, blocked entry to some slender pathways, and briefly closed Itaewon’s subway station to forestall an extreme variety of individuals shifting in the identical route.