Time stands still in Choi Min-seok’s room. The desk is strewn with photos and mementoes. Inside his wallet, his mother’s words beckoning him to stay safe and happy can be found. In a small pouch are his ashes, transformed into jade-coloured stones.
At 19, he had dreams of becoming a nurse, once he had completed his compulsory military service. His medical school vest still hangs on the wall.
“I am not ready to send him off to his memorial hall,” his mother, Kim Hee-jung, says. “Even though we parents are still breathing and alive, we’re as good as dead,” she says, sitting on his neatly made bed at home in Seoul.
On 29 October 2022, a deadly crowd crush unfolded during Halloween celebrations in Seoul’s Itaewon neighbourhood. It was one of the first events without pandemic-related restrictions, and attracted large crowds ready to enjoy their freedom. Trapped in a narrow alley near the subway station, the crush killed 159. The victims were mostly young, and included 26 foreign nationals.
For the bereaved families, the past year has brought anything but closure.
Since the disaster, the families of victims have accused authorities of seeking to shift the blame by scapegoating their relatives as drug-affected. They say officials have ignoring their pleas and failed to hold an independent inquiry to establish responsibility and accountability.
To date, not a single official has been criminally sanctioned for failings raised in an police report, which called Itaewon a “man-made disaster” due to a lack of preventive measures, including crowd control, and a delayed response from authorities.
The families have not received an official apology and their requests for talks with senior figures in authority, including with President Yoon Suk Yeol, have been met with silence.
Last month, ruling party leader Kim Gi-hyeon suggested that candlelit vigils, memorial services, and demands for accountability were orchestrated by North Korea.
“Why did the state do an investigation amongst themselves, those who are at fault?” says Kim Hee-jung. “The victims are dead, so they should ask us, the families. How can they know the facts if they don’t meet us?”
“It’s shrouded in mystery,” says Lee Jeong-min, the father of Lee Joo-young, 28, who died that night. “All we want to know is how and why our children died.”
“It was pure chaos”
Kim Hee-jung remembers receiving a distressing call from her son’s phone, with an unfamiliar voice notifying her that her son was receiving CPR and urging her to rush to Itaewon.
She went there, searching for her son among the bodies as party music blared in the background. It was not until later that she found his still-warm body in a mortuary for homeless people.
Lee Jeong-min recalls rushing to the scene after receiving a call from his daughter’s fiance, saying that she had lost consciousness. The couple had been set to marry in September and were passing through Itaewon after a wedding dress consultation. They were swept into the crowd.
“It was pure chaos,” he says. “Traffic and crowd control were nonexistent. There was no smooth passage of emergency vehicles. In such a critical situation with numerous fatalities and survivors in need of immediate medical attention, authorities failed to fulfil this crucial role.”
Lee has been campaigning for the passage of a law requiring an independent investigation, and leads the campaign group Bereaved Families of Itaewon Tragedy Association. “One of the foremost reasons we’ve been persistently battling the government for nearly a year is our deep-seated suspicions and the pursuit of truth,” he says.
He points to a drug crackdown conducted in Itaewon in full view of journalists earlier that day, and believes that it was a media show that diverted crucial resources. With visible overcrowding from early evening, he says police attention was on drug busts rather than crowd control.
Days after the crush, police allegedly collected items from the site for drug testing. All results came back negative. Some families were asked to approve autopsies aimed at identifying drug traces, drawing suspicions that authorities were trying to shift the blame.
Other controversies arose, including allegations that an internal police report on awareness beforehand of the risk of the crush happening was destroyed. One of the police officers suspected of being involved died in an apparent suicide after being suspended over the alleged cover-up. Two other ex-police officers are on trial and were released on bail in June.
Treated like criminals
Min-seok’s mother, Kim Hee-jung, produces a document, dated February 2023, which revealed that her late son’s financial records were accessed for an investigation after his death. She believes authorities were still trying to find evidence of drug-related transactions.
In April, she and other families received a letter from the police informing them that their children would not be indicted for the crime of “unnatural death”. Her heart sank at mention of the word “crime”.
“Why are our children treated like criminals? The state should be admitting it was at fault,” she says, calling such correspondence nonsensical and akin to an “act of state violence”. On Wednesday, interior minister Lee Sang-min said he “feels sorry and an infinite sense of responsibility” but to date there has been no official apology.
In January, the police concluded their investigation, categorising it as a “man-made disaster” attributed to a lack of preventive measures, including crowd control, and a delayed response from authorities. Crush asphyxia and brain swelling from oxygen deprivation were the primary causes of death.
Emergency call logs – which emerged after freedom of information requests by a politician – showed that a dozen calls warned about a potential crush nearly four hours before it happened. The police report said emergency services had “failed to respond appropriately” to calls indicating the risk of crowd crush death.
Twenty-three government officials were referred to prosecutors on fatal professional negligence and other charges, with only a handful so far on trial. To date, no one has been criminally punished, and the prosecution’s investigation is moving slowly. High-ranking officials were spared blame. In July, the constitutional court rejected a motion calling for the impeachment of interior minister Lee Sang-min over the crush.
The opposition-led National Assembly recently passed a motion fast-tracking a bill aimed at clarifying the causes of the crush through an independent investigation. The ruling conservative People Power party boycotted the vote, claiming that such a law “politicised” the disaster.
Lee Jeong-min too says the families have been shunned throughout the investigation. “If there are no issues, they should meet us and make us understand. But they can’t, as if hiding something,” he said.
In response to the families’ criticisms, South Korea’s presidential office told the Guardian that “immediately after the incident, President Yoon Suk Yeol expressed on several occasions that he was ‘heartbroken and deeply sorry as president,’ and this remains unchanged.”
“Recognising that it is of utmost importance to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents, the government has improved the national safety system,” it said, highlighting crowd management measures that were implemented at events including the recent fireworks festival in Seoul that drew an estimated million people.
“Our top priority is people’s lives and safety; the government will continue to assess the national safety system and make necessary improvements.”
Ahead of Halloween this year, authorities have pledged significant enhancements to safety and crowd control measures. The central government is conducting safety checks and deploying crowd control at key areas. In Seoul, the city government is rolling out a new CCTV crowd control system to monitor overcrowding.
In Seoul’s Mapo District, home to the party area of Hongdae, where large crowds are predicted to gather in place of Itaewon, banners have been placed saying that Halloween festivities have been banned. Major retailers have also toned down their Halloween promotions this year.
For Lee Jeong-min, the quest for closure continues. “We want the truth about that day, that moment, to be revealed correctly,” he says. “Only then can we free ourselves … and return to our daily lives.”
