YOu think there was enough room in, as I recall from my limited time in KOrea, space in those tiny shops and bars to house 100,000 people?
I don’t know. These were clubs and bars, so they could probably have pulled in a few dozen at least but perhaps that would’ve just invited part of the problem into their businesses.
1 Like
yup
I heard from one of my Korean friends that perhaps part of the problem was due to people in the crowd hearing the Korean word “push” instead of “back up” during the event. The words are almost exactly the same apparently. Just a different starting sound…
They could have been letting them in the front and out the back. Obviously easy to say. I’m sure many people didn’t know how serious it was until it was really bad.
1 Like
back is 뒤로 (dwiro)
push is 밀어 (mireo)
not only are the starting sounds different, the vowels are also different
but overall they do sound kinda similar
That’s insane. Letting them out the back into what? A narrower alley?
Are they narrower out the back? I don’t know.
But Stay outside getting crushed, the back alley is a bit tight seems insane.
Again, from my limited experience, yes. Some shoulder width apart. Similar to Japan and Taiwan in that respect.
Fair enough. Wouldn’t have helped then.
Not every back of bar and restaurant is a tiny alley in Taiwan though.
1 Like
They’re all tiny when there are that many people.
2 Likes
Yes. I used to go to footy matches. 20k and it was scary leaving at full time sometimes. And we were leaving from all four sides. 100k is an incredible number of people.
More space would’ve been better than the space they had. It doesn’t matter how big that “more space” could’ve been.
1 Like
I doubt that business could have absorbed any significant number of people to stop what happened. Maybe they should have broken into parked cars and sat it out. 
Oh sorry, it sounded almost identical except the front part to my untrained ear when they said it. 
Yeah I’m not sure if funneling an oncoming crowd of people into an enclosed space is a great idea, unfortunately.
1 Like
oh no, don’t be sorry, overall I was agreeing with you that they do sound similar but just wanted to spell out the differences
I could definitely see Koreans mixing the two up as well especially when there’s so much noise and chaos
there were a few Korean articles about a possible mix up between the two words as well
1 Like
My first time hearing about crowd crushes was when the Hillsborough disaster was on the news.
3 Likes
This was an accident
The ferry incident was the captain not evacuating the ship
By the way I don’t think asking if foreigners were involved constitutes the thinking that foreign lives are more important
If you are a foreigner somewhere in Asia you naturally think of other foreigners in Asia
That in itself does not mean you think less
Of others
6 Likes
Tragic and Horrifying. The Itaewon footage of the crush in the alley where police are standing in front of the crush trying to pull people out reminds of the footage from The Station night club fire in 2003 where people are trying to pull others out of the crush at the club entrance. It’s surreal that there’s essentially nothing in front of the crush of people that’s blocking them in both situations but they still cannot move an inch in any direction because people have become “interlocked”. Praying these things never ever happen again. I hope there is some kind of scientific study that is done to teach people and public safety how to of course prevent this, but to also teach possibly ways to break out of something like this, or how to help pull someone else out - because it honestly seems like in both situations everyone including the police is clueless on who/where/what/how to start extricating people.
3 Likes