One Year After the Itaewon Crowd Crush

Over Halloween weekend final 12 months, almost 160 younger individuals died in a crowd crush in Itaewon, a well-liked nightlife district in Seoul. For many who survived or misplaced family members, the previous 12 months has been a time of deep frustration and trauma.

A authorities investigation failed to clarify why desperate calls to the police had been ignored for hours. Senior officers refused to take responsibility. The catastrophe shortly grew to become politicized, dividing individuals — and quarreling political events — over who ought to be held accountable. Many wrote on-line that the younger victims and survivors ought to blame themselves. The survivors mentioned they felt revictimized.

In December, Lee Jae-hyeon, 16, a survivor who had misplaced two of his finest associates within the crowd crush, took his own life after battling on-line detractors of the victims. In a video message, he requested his mother and father to not blame themselves for his dying.

“I want that I’d have mother and father such as you in my subsequent life,” he mentioned.

As the primary anniversary of the catastrophe approached, survivors and victims’ relations struggled with unanswered questions, lacking their family members and on the similar time deeply troubled by the federal government’s response.

Probably the most haunting factor has been the sense of guilt amongst survivors and households who really feel they failed to guard their associates and kids.

Mr. Search engine marketing and his fiancée, Lee Joo-young, 28, grew to become trapped within the crowd once they went for a stroll by Itaewon after visiting a wedding-dress store. Waves of individuals pushed right into a slender alleyway from each ends, making a lethal, suffocating stress within the center.

Partitions of individuals pressed in from all sides, Mr. Search engine marketing mentioned, leaving no wriggling or respiration house. In entrance of him, he noticed stacks of people that had fallen on prime of each other. “Transfer again! Transfer again!” individuals shouted, however nothing occurred.

Mr. Search engine marketing handed out whereas standing. When he got here to, he discovered Ms. Lee standing subsequent to him unconscious, however there was nothing he may do to revive her.

He relives the nightmarish scene a number of occasions a day.

“Probably the most tough half is the sense of guilt,” Mr. Search engine marketing mentioned. “I got here out alive, however I couldn’t save her though she was standing proper subsequent to me.”

Ms. Lee was a designer who created cartoon characters based mostly on the cats, one black and one white, that she raised. She offered stickers, dolls, pouches and mugs bearing the cats’ picture.

“She by no means did not name me between 9 and 10 within the night, when she was driving dwelling after work,” Mr. Search engine marketing mentioned. “I really feel her absence when my telephone not rings.”

Lee Jeong-min, 61, sufferer’s father

Mr. Lee — the daddy of Ms. Lee, Mr. Search engine marketing’s fiancée — has been campaigning with different victims’ households to steer the nation that official negligence was guilty for the catastrophe. However he has discovered the federal government of President Yoon Suk Yeol unwilling to acknowledge duty.

Park Geun-hye, the final president affiliated with Mr. Yoon’s governing Folks Energy Get together, noticed her political fortunes crash after the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014. That catastrophe killed greater than 300 individuals, most of them high school students. The victims’ households and their supporters helped set up huge protests that finally led to Ms. Park’s impeachment in 2017. Mr. Yoon’s social gathering has moved to forestall related public discontent after Itaewon.

“Yoon Suk Yeol feared he would develop into a second Park Geun-hye,” Mr. Lee mentioned.

Victims’ households name the government’s investigation a whitewash as a result of it by no means correctly addressed what they are saying was official incompetence. No prime official has been held accountable.

“The federal government has been ignoring us as in the event that they wished we didn’t exist,” Mr. Lee mentioned.

Kim Cho-rong, 33, survivor

For survivors, life has by no means been the identical.

Ms. Kim, an writer, suffered reminiscence lapses and panic assaults. She generally struggled to go to the lavatory or to take the bus. Despair and suicidal impulses led her to hunt psychiatric counseling.

A part of her melancholy stemmed from what she referred to as South Korean society’s lack of ability to “sympathize with the sufferings of different individuals” and its tendency guilty people in a catastrophe reasonably than to look into broader — and probably embarrassing — structural causes.

Folks on-line referred to as the younger victims delinquent fun-seekers who ought to be liable for their disorderliness once they adopted Western customs like Halloween festivities. On a current afternoon, a younger mom and daughter walked previous a white tent close to Seoul Metropolis Corridor, the place mourners had paid tribute in entrance of images of Itaewon victims. When the lady requested who the individuals within the photos had been, the mom replied curtly, “That’s what would occur to you if you happen to didn’t behave.”

On-line, right-wing commenters vilified the households’ quest for accountability as a marketing campaign to destabilize the federal government and search extra compensation. They confirmed up with loudspeakers on the households’ rallies, shouting that North Korea was behind the catastrophe.

“It appeared that our society handled a tragedy by spreading hate,” Ms. Kim mentioned.

She has celebrated Halloween in Itaewon yearly since 2016. All of the festivities had been held with out main issues till final 12 months. Ms. Kim went by her images from 2017, when extra individuals gathered than there have been final 12 months. One image confirmed Ms. Kim smiling in the identical alleyway the place the gang crush would happen years later.

“That was after I realized that I did nothing unsuitable,” she mentioned, “and that there was nothing unsuitable about going out to have enjoyable.”

A lot of the nation has moved on. However for the bereaved households, time stays frozen on the day their kinfolk died. One father mentioned he cried for 2 days after a present his daughter had ordered for his wedding ceremony anniversary arrived two weeks after her dying.

Mother and father mentioned they prevented gatherings of kinfolk as a result of the absence of their youngsters was extra conspicuous and extra painful. Some saved recollections of their youngsters alive by preserving how their bedrooms had been once they died.

“I miss my daughter probably the most after I lie in my mattress,” mentioned Lee Hyo-suk, whose daughter Jeong Ju-hee, 30, died in Itaewon. “When she got here dwelling, she used to lie subsequent to me and discuss.”

Ms. Lee mentioned there was nothing she may do about her grief besides visiting Ms. Jeong’s grave and banding along with different victims’ households. They console each other and combat for the reality about their youngsters’s dying to make sure that the same tragedy is not going to occur once more. With the assist of opposition lawmakers, the households are pushing for a particular regulation to begin a brand new investigation that’s impartial of presidency affect.

“I had by no means imagined that this sort of catastrophe would occur to me,” Ms. Lee mentioned. “Now I do know that it may occur to anybody.”