Shock, grief after 153 die in Halloween crowd surge

SEOUL (AP):

Concerned relatives raced to hospitals in search of their loved ones on Sunday as South Korea mourned the deaths of more than 150 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who got trapped and crushed after a huge Halloween party crowd surged into a narrow alley in a nightlife district in Seoul.

Witnesses said the crowd surge on Saturday night in the Itaewon area caused “a hell-like” chaos as people fell on each other “like dominoes”. Some people were bleeding from their noses and mouths while being given CPR, witnesses said, while others clad in Halloween costumes continued to sing and dance nearby, possibly without knowing the severity of the situation.

“I still can’t believe what has happened. It was like a hell,” said Kim Mi Sung, an official at a nonprofit organisation that promotes tourism in Itaewon.

Kim said she performed CPR on 10 people who were unconscious, and nine of them were declared dead on the spot. Kim said the 10 were mostly women wearing witch outfits and other Halloween costumes.

WORST DISASTER

The crowd surge is the country’s worst disaster in years. As of Sunday evening, officials put the death toll at 153 and the number of injured people at 133. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said the death count could further rise as 37 of the injured people were in serious conditions.

Ninety-seven of the dead were women and 56 were men. More than 80 per cent of the dead are in their 20s and 30s, but at least four were teenagers.

At least 20 of the dead are foreigners from China, Russia, Iran and elsewhere. There is one American among the dead, the interior ministry said in a release.

Witnesses said the streets were so densely clogged with people and slow-moving vehicles that it was practically impossible for emergency workers and ambulances to reach the alley near Hamilton Hotel swiftly.

Authorities said thousands of people have called or visited a nearby city office, reporting missing relatives and asking officials to confirm whether they were among those injured or dead after the crush.

The bodies of the dead were being kept at 42 hospitals in Seoul and nearby Gyeonggi province, according to Seoul City, which said it will instruct crematoriums to burn more bodies per day as part of plans to support funeral proceedings.

Around 100 businesses in the Hamilton Hotel area agreed to shut down their shops till Monday to reduce the number of partygoers who would come to the streets through Halloween day.

While Halloween isn’t a traditional holiday in South Korea — where children rarely go trick-or-treating — it’s still a major attraction for young adults, and costume parties at bars and clubs have become hugely popular in recent years.

This was the deadliest crushing disaster in South Korean history. In 2005, 11 people were killed and around 60 others were injured at a pop concert in the southern city of Sangju.