Court relief for ex-Seoul top cop over Halloween crush

A court in Seoul found the city's former police chief and two other officers not guilty over a botched response to a Halloween crowd crush that killed nearly 160 people in 2022.

The verdict drew angry responses from grieving relatives and their advocates, who accused the Seoul western district court of refusing to hold high-level officials accountable for an incident that was largely blamed on a lack of disaster planning and an inadequate emergency response.

Former chief Kim Kwang Ho was the most senior police officer among more than 20 police and government officials indicted over the crush in Itaewon, a popular nightlife district. Prosecutors had sought a five-year prison term for Kim.

A probe found police and local officials failed to plan effective crowd-control measures even though they expected more than 100,000 people to turn up.

The police assigned just 137 officers to Itaewon, ignored calls warning of swelling crowds and, once the crush began, failed to establish control over the scene and allow paramedics to reach the injured in time.

Some experts have called the crush a "manmade disaster" that could have been prevented with relatively simple steps like employing more police and public workers to monitor bottleneck points, enforcing one-way walking lanes, and blocking narrow pathways.

The court acquitted Kim of professional negligence, saying that prosecutors failed to prove that he had violated his duties or to establish a connection between his conduct and the high toll of deaths and injuries.

ASSOCIATED PRESS