South Korean police have stated crowd management measures on the scene of a lethal Halloween crush within the nation’s capital, Seoul, was “insufficient”, promising powerful new security measures to forestall such a tragedy from taking place once more.
Nationwide Police Commissioner Common Yoon Hee-keun informed reporters on Tuesday that he felt “limitless duty about public security over this accident” that killed a minimum of 156 individuals.
The crush, which occurred in Seoul’s Itaewon district, was the deadliest such catastrophe in South Korea and occurred after an estimated 100,000 individuals – many of their teenagers and twenties and wearing costume – flocked to the realm’s bars, eating places and golf equipment to have a good time Halloween.
However neither police nor native authorities was actively managing the gang because the celebration was not an “official” occasion with a chosen organiser.
Nonetheless, Yoon stated, “there have been a number of studies to the police indicating the seriousness on the web site simply earlier than the accident occurred”.
Police knew “a big crowd had gathered even earlier than the accident occurred, urgently indicating the hazard,” he stated, acknowledging the best way this info was dealt with had been “insufficient”.
“I’ll do my greatest to verify such a tragedy as this doesn’t happen once more,” Yoon stated, including that the “police will speedily and rigorously conduct intensive inspections and investigation on all elements with out exception to clarify the reality of this accident”.
South Korea is often robust on crowd management, with protest rallies usually so closely policed that officers can outnumber individuals. On the time of the Itaewon catastrophe, about 6,500 officers had been current at a protest throughout city that was solely attended by about 25,000 individuals, in keeping with native media.
Police had beforehand stated they’d deployed 137 officers to Itaewon for Halloween.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, who has declared a week-long interval of nationwide mourning, paid his respects to the victims of the catastrophe at a makeshift memorial on Tuesday.
On the memorial web site, positioned close to the slim alleyway the place the catastrophe occurred, Yoon positioned a flower and bowed deeply.
Earlier within the day, he stated the nation wanted to urgently enhance its system for managing massive crowds.
“We should always provide you with concrete security measures to handle crowds, not solely on these streets the place this huge catastrophe occurred however at different locations like stadiums and live performance venues the place massive crowds collect,” he stated at a cupboard assembly.
These should embrace “cutting-edge digital capabilities” to enhance crowd administration, he stated, however critics declare such instruments exist already and weren’t deployed in Itaewon.
Seoul’s Metropolis Corridor has a real-time crowd monitoring system that makes use of cell phone information to foretell crowd measurement, nevertheless it was not employed on Saturday evening, native media reported.
Itaewon’s district authorities additionally didn’t deploy any security patrols, with officers saying the Halloween occasion was thought of “a phenomenon” relatively than “a competition”, which might have required an official plan for crowd management.
On the evening, 1000’s of individuals thronged a slim alleyway, with witnesses describing how, with no police or crowd management in sight, confused partygoers pushed and shoved, crushing these trapped within the lane.
Analysts stated the catastrophe might have been prevented, even with solely a small variety of cops.
“Good, secure crowd administration shouldn’t be concerning the ratio, however concerning the crowd technique – for secure crowd capability, move, density,” stated G Keith Nonetheless, a crowd science professor on the College of Suffolk.
South Korean skilled Lee Younger-ju stated that if native police knew they’d be short-handed, they might have sought assist from native authorities and even residents and store house owners.
“It’s not simply the numbers,” Lee, a professor from the Division of Hearth and Catastrophe on the College of Seoul, informed the AFP information company.
“The query is, how did they handle with the restricted quantity [of police] and what sort of measures did they take to make up for it.”