At least 149 crushed to death in Seoul stampede following Halloween festivities
The death toll may grow as officials say dozens are injured after a massive crowd began pushing forward in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel, a major party spot in Seoul.
SEOUL, South Korea — At least 149 people were killed and 78 others were injured in a stampede during Halloween festivities in Seoul, officials said, one of the biggest disasters in South Korea that will likely raise serious questions about public safety standards.
The massive death toll is being tallied after people were crushed by a large crowd pushing forward on a narrow alley in a major leisure and nightlife district in Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood.
Choi Seong-beom, chief of Seoul’s Yongsan fire department, said most of the victims in the stampede Saturday night were people in their late teens and 20s. “The figures include two dead foreigners and 15 injured foreigners,” he said.
Earlier, Choi had said the death toll could rise and that an unspecified number among the injured were in critical condition. The number of injured had been reported to be as high as 150.
Choi said that the bodies were being sent to hospitals or a gym, where bereaved family members could identify them. He earlier said most of the dead and injured are in their 20s.
The Itaewon Fire Station official said in an earlier televised briefing that 21 people were confirmed to have suffered cardiac arrest.
As morning arrived in Itaewon, a sense of quiet fell over the scene of the tragedy. Groups of stragglers still in costume wandered down streets that were lined with emergency tape. Emergency vehicles stood idle, sirens blinking, while police blocked off the entrances to the alleys where the disaster occurred.
Some Halloween revelers sat stunned on the sidewalk nearby, still trying to process the events of the night before.
Lee Da-eum, 25, said she was in a nearby club when she heard that there had been an accident outside.
“I arrived early and could already see (Itaewon) was getting too crowded,” Lee said. “Then my mom started calling and texting after she saw the news. She knew I was coming here and was so worried.”
“How could this happen?”
she said. People fell ‘like dominos,’ survivor says An estimated 100,000 people gathered in Itaewon — near a former headquarters of U.S. military forces in an area known for trendy bars, clubs and restaurants — for the country’s biggest outdoor Halloween festivities since the pandemic began. The South Korean government eased Covid-19 restrictions in recent months.
One survivor said many people fell and toppled to one another “like dominos” after they were being pushed by other people at a narrow downhill alley near Itaewon’s Hamilton Hotel. The survivor, surnamed Kim, said some people shouted “Help me!” and others were short of breath. Kim described being trampled by other people for about 1 ½ hours before being rescued, according to the Seoul-based Hankyoreh newspaper.
Another survivor, named Lee Chang-kyu, said he saw about five to six men start pushing others before one or two began falling one by one at the start of the stampede, according to the newspaper.
Video posted to social media from earlier in the evening show members of a packed crowd moving slowly down the street shoulder-to-shoulder in the same area where the stampede was alleged to have taken place.
Other videos of the packed crowd show people screaming and yelling and emergency medical personnel carrying victims down a littered street that had been cleared of crowds, and another shows someone trying to escape the stampede by scaling a wall.
The stampede is the biggest disaster since 304 people, mostly high school students, died in a ferry sinking in April 2014. The sinking exposed lax safety rules and regulatory failures as it was partially blamed on excessive and poorly fastened cargo and a crew poorly trained for emergency situations. Friday’s stampede will likely cause public criticism of government officials over what they’ve done to improve public safety standards since the ferry disaster.