HALLOWEEN ENTHUSIASM TURNED INTO SCREAMS - SEOUL CROWD ACCIDENT

 Seoul Crowd Accident - Even if people fall, the crowd moves forward - Enthusiasm turns into screams

The Halloween enthusiasm that 100,000 people poured in turned into screams. At midnight on the 29th, the accident in Itaewon, Seoul, where about 150 people were killed when they were crushed by a wave of people. Witnesses described a "Halloween nightmare" that kept moving forward even as people lost consciousness. 

The site of the disaster was an alley next to the hotel next to the exit of the subway station. It is narrow, about 2 meters wide, and a gentle descent continues for several tens of meters. At around 10 p.m. on May 29, 18-year-old female student Jeong Ga-eun, who was walking in front of the station, was horrified by the sight of zombie-infused people moaning and moaning in an alley. Several people had already fallen, and the tragedy had begun.

SEOUL STAMPEDE SITE PHOTO

According to Yonhap News Agency, the wave continued to move forward even after a person fell in front of it, and "piled up in 5~6 layers" (witness). While emergency services arrived and tried to carry out the unconscious person, they continued to move forward, unaware of the situation at the top of the alley. A participant who fled the scene wrote on social media, "I kept pushing to see if I didn't know that [people] had fallen below, and I thought I was really going to die." 

At the time of the accident, a popular You Tuber appeared in the alley club, and the surrounding area was densely populated. A police source said, "The road surface was sprinkled with alcohol and other substances, making it slippery." 

More than 140 ambulances were mobilized to the scene, but it took a long time to be transported, and some friends were seen giving heart massages to unconscious friends while in cosplay. On the other hand, many restaurants outside the area around the site remained open until the morning. 

A 24-year-old female office worker who had been participating in the restaurant's Halloween event until the morning recalled, "I heard the sound of ambulances coming and going, but at first I thought it was part of the festival.

Itaewon crushing accident: Video of "people singing and dancing with a fuss" in front of the rescue site went viral

On the 29th, when the Halloween party was held, a crushing death accident that occurred in Itaewon, a downtown area in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, caused many deaths, and videos of some people singing and dancing while making noise at the rescue site were found to have been spread on the Internet.

A video uploaded online on October 30 shows that when the Itaewon crash occurred, some people were making noise, raising their hands, and jumping on the spot while singing and dancing near fire trucks and ambulances. Some of them can be seen using pistol-shaped toys with soap bubbles. People gathered at the scene laughed and filmed the scene of the accident with their smartphone cameras.

People who have seen these videos online have responded with comments such as, "Singing and dancing at the scene of an accident is horrifying," "It's an unbelievable sight," and "This is hell." 

However, some speculated that "these people may be acting like that without knowing that there are so many deaths." 

Fire officials said on March 30 that as of 5 a.m. on the same day, there were 149 deaths and 76 injuries in the accident. Of those injured, 19 were seriously injured and 57 were slightly injured. 

However, fire officials said a total of 146 people had died and 150 had been injured by 4 a.m. that day. 

Choi Sung-beom, chief of the Yongsan Fire Department, explained in an announcement at the scene that the reason for the decrease in the number of injuries was that "the number of injuries decreased because some people went home among the minor injuries." 

"Most of the victims were teenagers and young people in their 20s, with two foreigners killed and 15 foreigners injured," the chief said.