Seoul Halloween stampede: Panicked emergency calls reveal crowd’s surge fears

South Korea’s interior minister and Seoul mayor apologised on Tuesday, vowing to find out the cause of the incident and prevent similar cases from recurring.

“As the minister overseeing the safety of the public, I express sincere apologies over the incident,” Lee Sang-min said, adding that the government had “limitless responsibility over the safety of our people” as he addressed a parliamentary session televised live.

He has come under sharp public criticism after saying that deploying more police would not have prevented the disaster.

Mayor Oh Se-hoon also tearfully apologised during a media briefing and said the city government would put all available administrative resources “until every citizen can return to their normal lives”.

National police commissioner General Yoon Hee-keun earlier on Tuesday acknowledged crowd control at the scene was “inadequate,” noting that police had received multiple reports warning of possible accidents on the night of the disaster.

“The police will speedily and rigorously conduct intensive inspections and investigation on all aspects without exception to explain the truth of this accident,” Yoon told a news conference.

The narrow street in Seoul‘s popular Itaewon neighborhood was already packed with people celebrating Halloween as high school student Eunseo Kim and her friend pushed themselves into the crowd.

Then she lost her balance and fell.

On the ground, Kim felt like she had become invisible to the crowd. People stepped on her ankle, wrist and calf, and she remembers thinking she was going to die.

Incredibly, she survived, but at least 156 others were killed in the crush Saturday night, 101 of them women, primarily in their teens or 20s, according to figures released Tuesday by the Interior and Safety Ministry.

Read more in this report:

Police have released transcripts of the 11 emergency calls made in the hours and minutes prior to the disaster, revealing the growing fear of revellers about the dangerous density of the crowds in Itaewon.

The transcripts suggest the first warning of a possible deadly surge was made at 6:34pm – roughly four hours before the crush became deadly – with a citizen saying: “Looks like you can get crushed to death with people keep coming up here while there’s no room for people to go down.

“I barely managed to leave but there are too many people, looks like you should come and control.”

The transcripts appear to confirm the accounts of witnesses, who told Reuters they saw some police directing traffic on the main road but few or no officers in the crowded pedestrian alleyways and side streets.

“People are falling down on the streets, looks like there could be an accident, it looks very dangerous,” another caller said at 8:33pm, according to the police transcript.

The latest call released by the police came at 10:11pm, minutes before people packed into one particularly narrow and sloping alley began to fall over each other. “[People] will get crushed to death here. It’s chaotic,” the transcript of that call says, noting that screams were heard over the phone.

An Australian whose friend died in the crowd surge on Saturday has blamed the disaster on Seoul authorities’ failure to employ effective crowd controls.

“If the government knows that there were going to be that many people there, and there is going to be road blockages, there should be enough police and emergency services already there on standby,” said 24-year-old Nathan Taverniti.

Mr Taverniti said he had shouted to nearby bars and clubs to open their doors to let some people in to ease the crowd, but that nobody listened. He said several police officers arrived about half an hour later and people in the crowd helped pull out those who were injured before more officers arrived later.

“I believe 100 per cent that this incident is a result of the government’s mismanagement and the lack of ability because I have known that Halloween event has always been this big in Itaewon,” he said. “This year there was clearly not enough police presence.”

A man has described surviving the disaster on Saturday in which one of his friends was killed and another two hospitalised.

Nathan Taverniti, a 24-year-old from Australia, said he didn’t sense that something terrible would happen in the vast Itaewon crowd until some women near him apparently slipped and fell, and people nearby tried to help them back up. By that time, he could no longer seen where his three friends were.

“All of a sudden more people started falling, there were just too many people,” he told the Associated Press.

Mr Taverniti recalled trying to grab what he believed were his friends’ hands among the people who were piling up, but having to let go after being crushed himself by the huge weight of other people who were losing their balance.

Around half an hour later, several police officers arrived, and people in the crowd began to help pull out those who were injured, he said.

Mr Taverniti later found one of his friends among the rows of unconscious bodies laid out in the pavement, and was able to locate his two other friends being treated at hospitals. He said he plans to stay in Seoul for a bit longer to ensure their steady recovery.

Police have identified 1.5 tonnes of personal items left behind by victims and survivors of the deadly crowd surge, including pieces of clothing, passports, and smartphones.

Hundreds of pairs of shoes and other objects have been laid out at a gym in Seoul in the hopes that their owners or their friends and family will retrieve them.

Most of the victims were women and many of them were missing shoes, which experts say reflects the force of a crowd surge that stripped footwear from their feet in the crush.

Yongsan police officials, who will keep the gym open for 24 hours until Sunday, didn’t immediately confirm how many of the items have been returned to their owners, the Associated Press reports.

South Korea lacks sufficient research on crowd management, president Yoon Suk Yeol has said.

In remarks at a cabinet council meeting today, the president said the government would meet soon with experts to review national safety rules, and called for the use of drones and other high-tech resources to develop effective crowd control capabilities.

Police have obtained footage from some 50 security cameras in the area of the fatal crush and are analysing social media clips, a senior officer has said.

More than 40 witnesses and survivors have so far been interviewed, the officer, Nam Gu-Jun, told reporters on Monday.

Earlier on Saturday, police are reported to have sent at least 7,000 officers to a separate part of Seoul to monitor anti-government protests.

This contrasts with the 137 officers who were sent to Itaewon on Saturday, primarily to monitor crime – particularly illicit drug use – rather than crowd control.

In the three years prior to the pandemic, between 34 and 90 officers were sent to monitor Halloween festivities in Itaewon each year.

Police have also said they have no specific procedures for handling incidents such as crowd surges during an event that has no official organisers, which festivities in Itaewon did not.