The misinformation going around that the Yongsan police department was short handed due to providing presidential security quickly spread around the Internet after the Itaewon stampede tragedy. Now the police are trying to play catch up to get the truth out that they actually had more officers in Itaewon than past Halloween celebrations:
Halloween festivities in Itaewon have no official organizers. South Korean police said Monday they don’t have any specific procedures for handling incidents such as crowd surges during an event that has no organizers.
Police said they dispatched 137 officers to maintain order during Halloween festivities on Saturday, much more than the 34-90 officers mobilized in 2017, 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic.
Citing those figures, police dismissed as “different from the truth” speculation that a police station in the area was understaffed because it was providing extra security for Yoon, who earlier moved the presidential office to a site near Itaewon. They said police-provided security for presidents has long been handled by two special police units which have nothing to do with the Yongsan police station, whose jurisdiction includes Itaewon.
ABC News
You can read more at the link, but the misinformation being put out was clearly an attempt to politicize the tragedy and blame it on President Yoon. If it got traction then it could help set up Yoon for impeachment much like what happened to former President Park Geun-hye who got blamed for the Sewol disaster during her presidency.
The death toll could go even higher with many more people still in the hospital in critical condition:
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.
Ken Fallas, a Costa Rican architect who went Itaewon with expat friends, used his smartphone to film video showing unconscious people being carried out from the alley as others shouted for help. He said the loud music made things more chaotic.
“When we just started to move forward, there was no way to go back,” Fallas said. “We didn’t hear anything because the music was really loud. Now, I think that was one of the main things that made this so complicated.”
Ninety-seven of the dead were women and 56 were men. More than 80% 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. Two of the dead are U.S. citizens, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul confirmed in a statement Sunday.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but no word yet if the two Americans were USFK service members or not. This report says that USFK has not reports of any casualties though they are still accounting for personnel. Once again condolences to all the friends and families impacted by this tragic disaster.
This article correlates with other reports I have read on social media that people at the top of the narrow alleyway adjacent to the Hamilton Hotel started pushing people down. This alleyway slopes uphill this caused a domino effect of people falling downhill on top of those below them:
Witnesses and survivors on Sunday said an overnight stampede that killed at least 151 people occurred after a massive group of people celebrating Halloween surged into a narrow downhill alley and were instantly pushed down by others.
The deadliest stampede in South Korea’s history happened Saturday night in the alley near Hamilton Hotel in the famous nightlife district of Itaewon after tens of thousands of people visited the area for Halloween.
A total of 151 people, including 19 foreigners, have been killed and 82 others injured, fire authorities said, adding the death toll could rise further.
“People kept pushing down into a downhill club alley, resulting in other people screaming and falling down like dominos,” an unidentified witness wrote on Twitter. “I thought I would be crushed to death too as people kept pushing without realizing there were people falling down at the start of the stampede.”
A woman her 20s said the accident occurred after a massive crowd of people were pushed back and forth for some time, which then led her friend to be pinned down under the crowd.
Another female survivor in her 20s, surnamed Park, said the stampede erupted as people flocked into the small street in a short period of time.
“A short person like me could not even breathe,” Park said. “(I) could survive as I was located on the sideline of the alley. It looks like people in the middle suffered the most.”
Other survivors, meanwhile, blamed the owners of bars and clubs nearby, who allegedly blocked people from escaping from the overcrowded alley.
“It looks like the casualties were more severe as people attempted to escape to nearby stores but were kicked out back to the street because business hours were over,” said the survivor who asked not to be named.
Yonhap
That is pretty horrible that business owners would not allow people to exit the alleyway through their businesses thus further contributing to this disaster. It will be interesting to see if they face any charges of liability.
This is absolutely horrible what happened last night in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul:
At least 146 people died and more than 150 were injured in a crowd crush in Itaewon, Yongsan-gu, central Seoul, according to fire authorities at 4:00 a.m. on Sunday. The fire department began to receive reports of patients having difficulty breathing at 10:22 p.m. on Saturday.
Of the 146 people who died, 101 were transferred to the hospital. The remaining 45 bodies were kept on site and later moved to a nearby multi-purpose indoor gymnasium. Identifying the deceased is expected to take some time, according to fire officials. Most of the dead were in their 20s. Officials expect that the number of casualties will continue to rise throughout the day.
Choi Eul-cheon, head of the Yongsan Police’s criminal division, said, “No drug-related reports have been confirmed” in response to a question about whether drugs were involved in the incident.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link, but rumors being spread was that it was caused by reports that candy filled with drugs was being handed out to people and that a celebrity was at a bar that caused a large amount of people to surge into the alley next to the Hamilton Hotel. There was obviously something going on in that alley to cause so many people to surge into that direction at once. I am sure in the coming days we will find out what happened. Odds are there was plenty of USFK servicemembers at Itaewon last night. No word yet of any of the casualties were US military personnel.
On Twitter there is a lot of videos showing what happened during the stampede and the aftermath. Looking at the videos it appears that most of the victims are young women, which would make sense that they would be crushed in a crowd more easily than larger males. Warning the videos below the fold are graphic.
(more…)It looks like it is not a good time to be an Itaewon business owner:
COVID-19 has done no favors to food and beverage businesses since the initial outbreak in Daegu months ago, but many restaurants continue to open as they find themselves in a catch-22. They won’t survive if they don’t open ― but if they do, they have to just hope they aren’t visited by an infected patient which puts them on the map.
The government has done an amazing and internationally touted job with its test-and-trace program to keep residents informed but it has some pitfalls, as businesses in Itaewon have learned.
“While I appreciate and applaud the efforts made by the Korean government to mitigate and curtail the spread of COVID-19 in the country,” explained Juweon Kim, cofounder and CEO of Vatos Urban Tacos in Itaewon, “I think what we have experienced in Itaewon is one of the negative consequences of the very public track-and-trace methods being employed by the government. Itaewon served as the low-hanging fruit for the 24-hour news cycle during a period when the news cycle was slowing down for COVID-19-related stories.” (……..)Residents around Korea need to be vigilant and take precautions as the pandemic continues to spread, but according to Juweon there has been “a mischaracterization by the media to make Itaewon sound like it’s the epicenter of the spread and it’s where there’s a high concentration of COVID-19 infections. This false narrative must change.”
Korea Times
Despite the government-released data that showed patient zero came from Yongin and the majority of the infected do not live or work in Itaewon, the media quickly labeled the uptick the “Itaewon cluster” and turned the once-popular district into a ghost town.
You can read more at the link.
The staff sergeant who is believed to be the main spreader of the Itaewon infection cluster has also reportedly infected a number of personnel he worked with the at the ROK Cyber Command as well:
An officer at the South Korean military’s cyber command has tested positive for the new coronavirus in the latest in a series of cases traced to a member of the command infected following a visit to clubs in Seoul’s Itaewon district, the defense ministry said Friday.
The new case raised the total number of infections in the military to 51.
The infected officer is one of the Cyber Operations Command personnel put into quarantine at a military facility in Goesan, some 160 kilometers southeast of Seoul, after having contact with a staff sergeant who contracted the virus following a visit to clubs and bars in Itaewon early this month.
Nine of the staff sergeant’s colleagues have been infected so far.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It is pretty amazing how many people that one person infected with the coronavirus was able to spread through clubs in Itaewon:
Coronavirus cases linked to clubs and bars in Seoul’s multicultural district of Itaewon have jumped to 54, an official said Sunday, as South Korea struggles to stop the cluster infection from spreading further.
The hike deepened fears that Itaewon-related infections could get out of control and lead to a nationwide transmission after the country had successfully brought the virus outbreak under control with zero local infections reported on many days in recent weeks.
The Itaewon infections began when a 29-year-old man tested positive on May 6 after visiting five clubs, including King Club, Trunk Club and Club Queen, between the night of May 1 and wee hours of May 2. More than 1,500 people were believed to have visited those clubs and bars on that night.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
