South Korean police have filed criminal charges, including manslaughter and negligence, against 23 officials, about half of whom are law enforcement officers, due to a lack of security measures they say led to mass gatherings in which resulted in the death of about 160 people.
Although a crowd of more than 100,000 people is expected over the weekend, the Seoul Police sent 137 officers to the Itaewon metropolitan nightlife area on the day of the stampede. These officers were focused on monitoring drug use and violent crime, which experts said left few resources for pedestrian safety.
Song Jae-han, who led a special investigation into the incident at the National Police Agency, said on Friday that his team would send the case to the prosecutor’s office. Among those recommended for arraignment are Park Hee-young, the mayor of Seoul’s Yongsan district, and former district police chief Lee Im-jae, two of the six arrested.
Lee is also accused of falsifying a police report to hide his late arrival at the scene. Two other police officers were arrested on suspicion of trying to destroy computer files and other possible evidence related to the accident.
The results of the 74-day police investigation announced by Son largely confirmed what was already clear: police and government officials in Yongsan did not take meaningful crowd control measures regarding the expected number of Halloween revelers and essentially ignored calls from pedestrians. reported to police hotlines, who warned of the growing crowd hours before the wave turned deadly on October 28.
Officials also messed up their response when people began to topple and crush themselves in a narrow alley lined with party-goers outside the Hamilton Hotel around 10 p.m., failing to establish effective control over the scene and allow rescuers to reach the injured in time, Son said.
“(Their) inaccurate judgment of the situation, slow dissemination of information about the situation, poor cooperation between relevant agencies, and delays in rescue operations were among the overlapping failures that resulted in a large number of casualties,” Song said at a press conference in Seoul.
“Technological disaster”
Song said his team has interrogated about 540 people and collected 14,000 pieces of evidence from central and municipal governments and transportation departments. He said police investigators examined more than 180 video files recorded on CCTV cameras or filmed by journalists and pedestrians and, together with forensic experts, examined the scene to analyze crowd density.
Police said the crowd that filled the hallway-like lane between the hotel and the dense row of storefronts turned into an unstoppable wave around 9 p.m., with people unable to dictate their movements once they were overwhelmed. Around 10:15 pm, people began to fall and topple over each other like dominoes, leading to a tragedy that left 158 people dead and 196 injured.
Analysis of security footage and modeling by the National Forensic Service indicate that the crowd density in the alley was about eight people per square meter (yard) around 10:15 pm. Density rose to eight to nine people occupying the same unit of area as at 10:20 p.m. and from nine to 11 people as of 10:25 p.m., police said.
Medics with difficulty reached the scene, because the area was very densely packed with people. The arrivals were so overwhelmed by the large number of people lying motionless on the ground that they asked bystanders to help them perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Most of the deaths were due to asphyxiation or brain damage, police said.
It’s unclear whether the results of the police investigation will be enough to assuage public anger and demands for government accountability as the country continues to grapple with its worst disaster in nearly a decade.
Opposition MPs and some relatives of the victims have demanded an investigation into higher-ranking figures such as Interior and Security Minister Lee Sang-min and Commissioner General of the National Police Agency Yoon Hee-geun, who have faced calls to resign.
However, Song said the special investigation team would close its investigations into the Ministry of Interior and Security, the National Police Bureau and the Seoul Metropolitan Government, saying it was difficult to establish their direct responsibility.
Some experts have called the Itaewon stampede a “man-made disaster” that could have been prevented with fairly simple steps, such as hiring more police and public servants to monitor bottlenecks, providing one-way footpaths and blocking narrow paths, or temporarily closing Itaewon. metro stations to prevent large numbers of people from moving in the same direction.
