Around 150 dead at Halloween celebrations in Seoul

It should have been the biggest party of the year. Instead, this year’s Halloween celebrations in Itaewon, Seoul’s starting district, ended in a national tragedy: at least 153 people died after a crowd on Sunday night, and another 82 were injured, some seriously. 19 of them are said to be in critical condition. Yonhap News reported that among the dead were at least 97 women. A worker from the local fire department also said many of the victims were young women in their 20s. Foreigners are said to be among the fatalities, including from China, Iran, Russia and the United States.

In the early hours of the morning, the bodies were taken to a nearby gym, where they are now being identified by relatives. However, the authorities had already warned that the number of deaths could rise further in the next few hours. Some people are still in critical condition.

According to eyewitnesses, the accident happened after the crowds had turned into a narrow side street in the neighborhood. Horrific scenes could be seen on smartphone videos circulating online: dozens of young people lying lifeless on the sidewalk and being wrapped in blue plastic bags. “It’s unreal to see body after body being carted out of a building here,” writes Bryan Pietsch, a journalist for the Washington Post in Seoul, on his Twitter account.

Local television station SBS interviewed several eyewitnesses who reported that they were trying to carry out desperate resuscitation efforts on the injured on the street because rescue workers could not have made their way through the crowds in time.

The specific circumstances of the tragedy remain unclear. The most likely scenario is that there was stampede among the tightly packed party crowd. According to local media reports, rumors are also circulating that drug-laced candy may have been distributed at a club, which later triggered cardiac arrests. Other media reported about a bar that many people wanted to crowd into because celebrities are said to have stayed there.

The accident happened in the Itaewon district, which in South Korea is both a haven of freedom and is notorious for being a den of sin: countless nightclubs, gay bars and prostitution salons are lined up in a few square kilometers between an American military base and the country’s largest mosque . And on no night does the quarter attract more young people than on Halloween weekend.

This year, for the first time, the festival took place again without Covid requirements. With no mask requirement and no curfew, many Koreans had an immense urge to celebrate exuberantly, which found an outlet this weekend: More than 100,000 people moved to the Itaewon district on Saturday evening, most of them dressed in Halloween costumes. “Fortunately we weren’t among the crowds,” writes a young woman on her Instagram account: “Itaewon is extremely crowded every year, but this year it was just crazy.”

President Yoon Suk-yeol, whose office is just a few minutes’ walk from the scene of the accident, convened two crisis meetings on Sunday night and ordered the surrounding hospitals to prepare emergency beds. Seoul’s Mayor Oh Se-hoon, who is currently on a visit to Europe, immediately canceled all appointments and took the next plane home.

The reporters were treated to surreal scenes at the scene of the accident until late at night: While the bodies were being taken away in rescue vehicles and shocked passers-by burst into tears, partygoers were just a stone’s throw away dancing in the pedestrian zone – apparently too drunk to realize that only shortly before one of the greatest tragedies in South Korea’s recent history had occurred.