Apparently the media there is emphasizing the fact the kids were celebrating a foreign holiday in an expat area (it really isn’t anymore, as it was gentrified by Koreans a few years back when US military left), and less on the culpability of the local government in helping control and manage the crowds (most of the police were diverted to stand by some sparsely attended protest… as usual in Korea, they’re prioritizing protecting the elite over protecting youths).
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People don’t realize how easily something like this can occur
It was totally unexpected
Korea will probably ban holloween gatherings I going forward
Remember
The event in Taiwan where colored flour caught on fire and burned so many people ?
That was totally unexpected too
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Yeah, they weren’t expecting anything like this because it’s unprecedented. The police at the protest sites and the Halloween gathering were there to prevent crime, not for crowd safety.
The police have zero experience in crowd safety, and it wasn’t their goal.
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Any slight movement at the edges of the dense crowd along the 4m-wide alley could have caused the whole crowd to collapse, said visiting professor at University of Suffolk Keith Still.
“Unfortunately, under those circumstances, as the crowd falls over, people then try to get up, arms and legs get twisted together,” Prof Still told CNA’s Asia Tonight on Sunday, a day after the incident.
He added that it takes about 30 seconds to cut off the blood supply to the brain, leading people to lose consciousness, and asphyxia sets in within four to six minutes.
Seoul Halloween crowd crush: How could it have happened?
Why the Seoul crowd crush was not a stampede
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By the way, the concern for something like this happening is exactly why the Taipei Domed Baseball Stadium took so long to complete. After FarGlory altered the original design and it was approved by the KMT mayors, the emergency exit would have forced evacuating attendees to squeeze through underground tunnels to exit the stadium. This is not ideal in the first place, and the fact that these tunnels aren’t even designed wide enough is even worse. Then the open area that they emerge to once they get out from the tunnels also has insufficient spaces to maintain the throughput in the tunnels. That’s what all those simulations debates were about, preventing stupid things like this happening when there is already an emergency.
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Oh that was bad. Really bad. 
Guy
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How long before people get Taiwan and Itaewon mixed up?
Another perspective:
Basically, as per emergency calls records:
This tragedy was preventable. People were asking for help 4 hours before the collapse.
Massive gatherings in the area were not unusual.
Authorities reacted slowly and inefficiently.
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If you have four hours before the collapse can’t you leave then?
Niece of a Congressman was there.
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Hindsight is 20/20. If you get a call saying an alley is getting overcrowded and you’ve never heard of crowd crushes, you clearly don’t see if as an emergency. Looks like they eventually sent people, but not enough or too late.
I’m guessing if they could leave then they wouldn’t have had to call the police.
EDIT: Just read through the transcript of the first caller to police 4 hours prior the incident. They managed to get out because they figured out people were probably going to start getting crushed soon, but most people still hadn’t realized how bad it was going to get yet.
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Managing crowds is not a case of 20/20 hindsight. This was the first Halloween event in Itaewon since the pandemic and they were expecting up to a hundred thousand people. Clearly the authorities dropped the ball here.
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The question is: how? If all streets were full and people still streaming in, was there a route to safety? We’ll know more as more is uncovered.
You’re probably the only one.
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Yes, they were. But they didn’t expect any deaths. It’s literally never happened before in Seoul, and the police had no knowledge of the dangers that dense crowds could pose.
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Are you serious? It’s never happened in Seoul but crowd crushes and collapses have happened in plenty of other countries. Dense and uncoordinated crowds pose serious dangers for many reasons and this was unfortunately the worst case scenario. Letting them off the hook because, well, gee… it’s never happened here before… is ridiculously complacent and shortsighted. There should have been someone coordinating this massive surge of humanity, or someone with the foresight to see what might happen if you pack tens of thousands of people into narrow alleyways.
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Nobody was letting them off the hook. I was pointing out that knowing how big the crowd was going to be isn’t going to do any good if you don’t even have experience and training and knowledge in crowd control measures.
Read the press conference held by the police. They literally had no idea this could happen even though they knew the crowds were going to be big. They dropped the ball by not being trained for it, which has nothing to do with whether they were expecting large crowds.