An On Site Analysis of the Itaewon Crushing Disaster
I recently found myself in Itaewon and decided to walk by where the Itaewon crushing disaster happened. As I walked in to Itaewon I could quickly see how this tragedy has become fully politicized with the Korean left trying to weaponize it like they did the Sewol tragedy against former President Park Geun-hye. Near Noksopyeong Station which is located at the entrance to Itaewon, there is a protest tent set up with a bunch of signs denouncing the government. I did not walk over to their tent or try to take pictures of them because I was getting the evil eye from the angry looking activists standing by the sidewalk. I just continued to walk by them to towards the Hamilton Hotel.
I could not approach the alley from the front of the Hamilton Hotel because there was a protest going on with the riot police out in force. So I walked up a nearby alley to the World Food Street that is the road that runs behind the Hamilton Hotel. This street is lined with restaurants and bars that would have been packed on Halloween night:
From the main road that runs through Itaewon there are multiple alleys, some even smaller than the one the tragedy occurred at that accesses World Food Street. Here is an example of one of these small alleys:
Seeing the area in person it is easy to conclude that what caused the crushing tragedy to happen where it did is its proximity to Itaewon Station. There are two paths along each side of the Hamilton Hotel which is the quickest way to access World Food Street from Itaewon Station. The alley where the tragedy happened was the smallest of the two and the closest to the station. It is easy to imagine how people walking up and down this alley due to its easy access to the subway station caused it to become overcrowded. Below is a picture I took from the top of the alleyway where the tragedy occurred:
The police would not allow me to walk down the alley, but I wouldn’t have tried to anyway due to the protest going on at the entrance to the alley. Seeing the alley in person it looks actually smaller than it does in photographs. From the top of the alleyway I could see how slopped it is. Witnesses the night of the tragedy reported a group of people began pushing people down the alley. It was easy for me to imagine a group of drunks trying to walk down World Food Street getting frustrated by being backed up by the crowd moving through the alleyway and deciding to aggressively push by them causing people to fall. The slope of the alleyway is enough to cause a domino effect of people falling on top of each other if people on the top lose their balance.
What amazes me the most about this tragedy is that the police received reports of overcrowding near the Hamilton Hotel four hours before the tragedy happened. There is literally a police station across the street from the Hamilton Hotel:
Why didn’t anyone from the police station walk across the street and respond to the reports? What were they doing during those four hours? Did the 119 operators even call to let them know? Did anyone walk in to the station and tell the police what was going on? If someone did what was the response of the police? These are questions that should be simple to get answers to.
Being on the ground and looking at the site only further validated to me how easily avoidable this entire tragedy was. Police responding to the alleyway and controlling pedestrian traffic to make it one way probably would have prevented the disaster. Just closing Itaewon Station and making people walk from subway stations further away from the center of Itaewon would have dispersed the crowds enough from this narrow alleyway that this tragedy would have been prevented as well. Hopefully some lessons are learned in regards to crowd control planning by local authorities, it is just unfortunate it cost the lives of 158 people to learn this lesson.
Part of me agrees with you completely. Part of me mistrusts “Big Brother” or “Nanny State” solutions even in their most benign forms.
The people killed were nominally adults and ought to have assumed responsibility for their own health and safety.
While is an unspeakable tragedy, and the relatives and friends of those killed and injured have my sympathy, anyone who wants the government to tell them when it’s safe to go out to eat or drink should probably move to North Korea, China, or some other “Worker’s Paradise.”
What he said.
Those who exchange freedom for safety will certainly give up their freedom. They still probably have to manage their own safety.
Anybody who lived through three years of covid mismanagement who now calls for government solutions that involve telling me what i can do and where i can go, are clearly not engaged.
They can wear as many masks as they want, take all the mystery injections as offered, eat all the bugs available, live in their assigned pod, be told not to go to the busy place like the demonstration over bugs and pods… whatever.
But i dont share the desire for a boot to come off your neck only long enough to lick it.
Itaewon is a tragedy… not an excuse to find new ways to control me for no reason.
You live and die by your choices. Make poor choices, expect poor outcomes. Don’t need/want some government body tell me what I can and can’t do.
Those who are protesting in that alleyway, are the surviving parents and other family members of the dead. They must be red commies too.
It’s pretty much confirmed now. GI Korea, this site, and all the clowns in it, all of them, are CIA operative wumaos whose mission is to do whatever they can to keep Yoon in power so that the US can keep South Korea on a leash.
It’s funny GI Korea is asking why the police didn’t do anything. Maybe you should ask the person who took over the Korean national police force when he took power? The President himself? His government was in charge of the police force, when he centralized the police power, last July.
Whoa there KM.
I think the reason the police didn’t do anything may be more because of the “civil service mentality” that affects the government and law enforcement employees, and military personnel all over the world, and is especially serious here in Korea.
The mentality that goes something like
“Just another day”
“I don’t want anything to happen while I’m on duty”
“I want to get my duty over with and go home”
“Do I have to go outside and check?”
In the case of the Itaewon tragedy, GI Korea has taken a more reasonable and moderate stance.
That is in contrast to others who seems to be hell bent on trying to show that Yoon isn’t responsible and fear a repeat of the aftermath of Sewol, while trying to show the victims are responsible with this line of thought “Hey you were given the freedom to go out and drink, you are responsible for your well being, so stop blaming Yoon.”
To put things into perspective, GI Korea is saying that the police should have taken more active crowd control measures.
Yes Crowd control not preventing people from drinking and partying.
Two different things.
So this begs the question.
What does crowd control have to do with government telling people not to drink and party?
“What does crowd control have to do with government telling people not to drink and party?”
TOK, you insincere motherfùcker.
What does a cold that killed 226 people between the age of 20 and 40 in a country of over 50 million have to do with government telling people not to drink and party?
In both cases, nothing.
We can probably both agree on that.
How about this question:
Will the government arbitrarily take and abuse power to accomplish goals that are not in the interests of those being governed?
Unless your head has been buried deeply in your àss for the last 3 years, we can probably agree on that, too.
The only question is why you are bent fully over, trousers down, lubed up with an Alabama wetwipe¹, spreading your freshly-shaved butt cheeks, and turning your head over your shoulder with a coquettish look in your bedroom eyes.
“Govern me harder, daddy,” he said breathlessly.
Instead of demanding the government control the crowd, demand the government encourage common sense, situational awareness, ability to recognize danger, and all the other traits that make government babysitting unnecessary and removes the temptation to repurpose crowd control for citizen safety into crowd control for government safety.
¹Alabama Wetwipe: When you blow your snotty nose on a tissue and wipe your ass because you ran out of wet wipes and your hole is too raw for dry TP.
ChickenHead or should I say setnaffa
TOK is the more reasonable of the Korean commentators here.
For you to react in that manner means that TOK is correct and you Setnaffarists are all wrong, and out of step with reality.
Get real motherfucker.
And I see that setnaffa condones the White redneck raping Korean males.
It is good to see setnaffa show his true racist Southern colonial condescending self.
No wonder he wants to keep Yoon in power.
Yoon is a brainless buffon who will jump when the US tells him to jump, unlike Moon.
A nice puppet for the Setnaffarists to soothe their white supremacist egos and feel superior and in control of the Asian race.
Korea Person, you may be right.
“TOK is the more reasonable of the Korean commentators here.”
That is true… at least until he starts talking about incompetent police and then wants more of them telling me what to do like the village river guard blowing a whistle at me for not wearing a life vest in knee-deep water.
“For you to react in that manner means that TOK is correct and you Setnaffarists are all wrong, and out of step with reality.”
I fear you are right. I just spent almost 3 years (so far) watching reality tolerate things that should never be tolerated… from arbitrary social controls to wealth transfers away from the middle class to encouraged criminality to the destruction of small business to promotion of needless war to medical experimentation to the breaking and/or political weaponization of every institution to constant government lies about everything… the list goes on and on.
This is reality.
I am clearly out of step with it as I yell at the sky, “For God’s sake, the 8 year-old shouldn’t be on puberty blockers and scheduled to have his peener cut off.”
“Get real motherfucker.”
Careful… the mother I fùcked…
…may have been yours.
“And I see that setnaffa condones the White redneck raping Korean males.”
All of this and you are a homophobe against mixed race relationships? You probably don’t even care about my pronouns, bigot.
I just spent almost 3 years (so far) watching reality tolerate things that should never be tolerated… from arbitrary social controls to wealth transfers away from the middle class to encouraged criminality to the destruction of small business to promotion of needless war to medical experimentation to the breaking and/or political weaponization of every institution to constant government lies about everything… the list goes on and on.
Chicken Head or should I say setnaffa.
I have always though of you as a whiner.
And from the words above, I’m more confident that my thoughts are correct.
It is no wonder the Setnaffarists are nothing more than whinning losers who keep complaining and whinning in the ROK Drop.
The Koreans on the other hand are the smart one who see more than what the narrow brainless vision of the Setnaffarists pick up and thus have a better insight of what is going on.
I also realize that you feed off and enjoy these sort of exchanges.
So I’ll leave you to stew in your racism, sexual pervesion, whinnings, and illogical thoughts.
Wait…
There is stew made from racism and sexual perversion?
Sounds like something to eat with a spork.
So have you gotten the new bivalent booster yet?
You can never be too Safe & Effecrive.
It took the c’bot this long to realize CH enjoys this?
Dang. That a pretty serious self-pwn…
It took the c’bot this long to realize CH enjoys this?
Setnaffa
We know you are pro-China and pro-Russia.
You don’t have to hide it by calling Koreans, chinabots.
Then of course you are racists which might explain using derogatory terms when referring to Koreans..