The hip alleys of Itaewon were once considered one of the main destinations in Korea to celebrate Halloween, as people gathered there to enjoy the annual event before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the nation three years ago. With nightclubs, bars and restaurants packed tightly together, Itaewon was a popular place for culturally curious Koreans to easily mingle with people from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds.
The emergency calls started coming in at 10:24 p.m. on Saturday, reporting the tragedy which happened in a narrow, sloped alley immediately west of the Hamilton Hotel. The alley, 41 meters long and only four meters wide, barely enough room for six adults to stand side by side, runs between Itaewon’s main thoroughfare and another busy alley called Itaewon World Food Street running behind the hotel.
A popular nightlife area for foreigners and Koreans in Seoul’s central Yongsan District, Itaewon has often seen huge crowds, especially around every Halloween when costume-wearing revelers fill the alleys throughout the area. But this latest Halloween saw even larger crowds than ever before.
According to one witness at the scene who survived, the crowd density reached the point where people were completely stuck in place.
According to one rumor, people were rushing to see a celebrity at one of the establishments in the area. Shortly before the incident, one survivor reported hearing people screaming.
The situation turned fatal when some people in the middle of the crowd tripped and fell, pushing over others next to them and triggering a domino effect. Witnesses said the collapse seemed to have happened “abruptly at once.”
One of the survivors said he felt a sudden weight on his back as the crowd surged forward. “The push knocked some people down, which initiated the fiasco,” he said. “I saw one male seriously injured and bleeding all over.”
Due to the incline of the road, the crowd pressed more heavily on that downhill, and people piled on top of others, as many as five to six people deep. The pressure caused much lower down to have difficulty breathing and lose consciousness.
A TV news reporter stands in front of the entrance to an alley in
Seoul's Itaewon, Sunday morning, where hundreds of people celebrating Halloween
were crushed together the night before. The personal belongings of victims
are seen lining the edges of the alley. Korea Times photo by Ko Dong-hwanWitnesses said that onlookers shouted at those on top to “pull back!” to save the people underneath. But some in the crowd misunderstood it as “push” and did what they heard, prolonging the predicament.
Early reports claimed that a crowd had trampled one person. Emergency workers and ambulances from Yongsan Fire Station and other nearby fire stations arrived at the scene much later than usual because of all the vehicular and foot traffic in the area.
Rescuers and police officers attempted to free people trapped in the pile but the accumulated weight of bodies made their attempts futile for a while. A video shot by an eyewitness from higher up in a nearby building shows a policeman struggling unsuccessfully with the arms of one of the trapped victims. The woman recording the video can be heard sobbing and saying, “Oh my god, (the bodies) not moving at all.”
“All the employees from the shops nearby came out and helped rescue people,” another witness said. “It was truly chaos.”
Almost 300 people ended up suffering breathing problems after the victims were finally freed. The streets and alleys around Hamilton Hotel and in the vicinity of the scene were packed with rescue workers performing CPR on dozens of unconscious victims. But the victims outnumbered the emergency workers available at the scene. Workers and bystanders who decided to help out carried the bodies of those they couldn’t resuscitate to ambulances. “Firefighters ran around the area giving CPR to people,” one of the survivors said. “It was like a war zone.”
Police attempt to control the crowd early Sunday morning, as victims are rushed to
hospital while pedestrians continue to pack the sides of the road. YonhapMost of the victims were women in their 20s. The youngest has been identified as 16 years old. Many foreigners were also in the crowd. Those who needed immediate treatment were transported to Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital, the nearest large-scale hospital, and 14 other medical centers across Seoul and Gyeonggi Province.
Because the scene following the accident was so crowded with victims, rescuers and onlookers, phone and internet reception were temporarily out of service in the area. All emergency workers available in Seoul at that time were called to the scene, with about 1,700 workers and over 140 ambulances responding. Family members of the victims arrived at the scene, where many received the tragic news.
