Korea in deep shock as families demand answers

Shocked family members collected bodies, parents searched for children and a country sought answers yesterday after at least 153 people were crushed to death when a crowd in South Korean capital Seoul surged in an alleyway during Halloween festivities.

President Yoon Suk-yeol declared a period of national mourning and designated Seoul's popular Itaewon district a disaster zone after the Saturday night disaster.

"This news came like a bolt from the blue sky," said a father who burst into tears as he collected his daughter's body from a morgue.

A huge crowd celebrating in Itaewon surged into an alley, killing at least 153 people, most of them in their teens or 20s, emergency officials said.

They added the death toll could rise.

The revellers, many in Halloween costumes, were ready to enjoy the bars, nightclubs and restaurants, where the celebration routinely spills over into narrow and often steep side streets.

Instead, the street became filled with people crying for help, while emergency workers desperately sought to free trapped bodies and perform CPR on people splayed across the debris-littered ground.

Choi Sung-beom, head of the Yongsan Fire Station, told a briefing at the scene 82 people were injured, 19 of them seriously. The deaths included 22 foreigners, he said.

Families and friends desperately sought word of loved ones at community centers turned into facilities for missing people.

At least 90 percent of the victims had been identified by midday, with delays affecting some foreign nationals and teenagers who did not yet have identification cards, the Interior Ministry said.

Makeshift memorials began appearing near the site, with onlookers leaving flowers and notes.

President Yoon expressed condolences to the victims and his wishes for a speedy recovery to the many injured in one of the South Korea's worst disasters and the world's worst stampedes in decades.

"This is truly tragic," he said in a statement, vowing an investigation into the cause of the disaster.

"A tragedy and disaster that should not have happened took place in the heart of Seoul last night."

South Korean tech and mobile game firms including Kakao and NCSOFT pulled their Halloween promotions after the tragedy, while amusement park Everland cancelled Halloween-themed events.

Many regional governments and organizations have canceled or reduced festivals and other celebrations.

The crush of partygoers came as Itaewon - a symbol of freewheeling nightlife in the South Korean capital for decades - was just starting to thrive after more than two years of Covid-19 restrictions, with trendy restaurants and shops replacing seedy establishments.

It was the first Halloween event in Seoul in three years to be virtually free of Covid-19 restrictions and social distancing.

Many of the partygoers were wearing masks and Halloween costumes.

Twenty-four hours before, there were already warning signs that the festivities were attracting dangerous numbers of people and victims and their relatives questioned an apparent lack of crowd control.

Early yesterday costumes and personal belongings mingled with blood spots in the narrow street. Survivors huddled under emergency blankets amid throngs of emergency workers, police, and media.

Many of those killed were near a nightclub, Choi said. The foreigners killed included people from China, Iran, Uzbekistan and Norway, he added.

Witnesses described the crowd becoming increasingly unruly and agitated as the evening wore on.

Chaos erupted just before the 10pm stampede, with police on hand for the event at times struggling to control the crowds, witnesses said.

Moon Ju-young, 21, said there were clear signs of trouble in the alley before the incident and that it was more than 10 times as crowded as usual.

Social media footage showed hundreds of people packed in the narrow, sloped alley crushed and immobile as emergency officials and police tried to pull them free.

Choi, the Yongsan district fire chief, said all the deaths were likely from the crush in the alley.

Fire officials and witnesses said people continued to pour into the alley after it was already packed wall-to-wall, when those at the top of the slope fell, sending people below them toppling over others.

A makeshift morgue was set up in a building next to the scene. About four dozen bodies were wheeled out on wheeled stretchers and moved to a government facility to identify the victims, according to one witness.