Personally, I always look out for any foreign deaths too. I have kids and them going to study/work abroad often pops into my mind. Losing a kid must be terrible. I don’t know how people cope. Losing one thousands of miles away and not knowing what is happening is a big fear of mine.
Just like the students being killed in Taiwan by boyfriends jumps out to me more than other stories because I have a daughter.
Sad.
Depressing videos here:
https://web.bc3ts.net/post/5547289
Last year New Years Eve near 101, it got super packed in the last ~5 mins as people tried to get closer. You could barely move your arms up to take a photo, and were touching people on all sides. It was dangerous. I told my friend at the time, kinda keep your arms to your side like keeping a box around you to ensure a little bit of breathing room. People don’t realize that one small incident can cause a crush/stampede.
That’s what I heard too.
I assume the local authorities treated this year’s event exactly like, or similar to, the ones in the past and did not account for increased traffic due to prior years cancellations. I also heard the theory about a supposed celebrity sighting maybe being the trigger for this - curious if anyone has any proper evidence of that yet.
there is one thing I couldn’t stand about Korea, most Koreans just push through crowds, they just shove and move people out of the way like it’s normal. They don’t do lines well and don’t do well moving in crowds, it’s mayhem. I once went to on a trip and I was annoyed as shit at how nobody was making a proper line to get into the ferry, just fucking pile driving each other. Taiwanese have much better orderly procedures. I noticed this difference right away.
Also drunk people don’t do well with shit like this and I bet you Hal the crowd was drunk as shit as drinking is Koreas national sport.
no evidence of that yet, and I personally think that rumor is just being used to distract people from holding the city responsible. It could be true though, but whether the celebrity was there or not, police should’ve been there to control crowds beforehand.
There was also a rumor that clubs were giving out free drugs, and of course the xenophobic Korean media associates drug use with foreigners so it’s easy to see how that rumor came about.
yeah
I speak Korean natively and spent some time living in Korea, so I’ve been following the news and social media very closely, and it’s unfortunate how these rumors are being spread. But based on my knowledge, there is a bit of a drug problem in Itaewon. People shouldn’t link the drug issues to foreigners though.
it’s also no surprise to me that this drug rumor comes about after President Yoon declared a war on drugs… lol
This terrrible tragedy was a crowd-control problem, not a drug problem.
Guy
yeah, as I said with the celebrity rumor, I feel the drug rumors are also being used to distract people from holding the city responsible. The police definitely should’ve done some crowd control beforehand.
In the Korean media, it was also said that the police even predicted in advance there would be over 100,000 people there. But they still chose not to do any crowd control… smh
Well yeah, obviously we know that. Both the celebrity rumor and the free drugs rumor are diversionary tactics to distract from the root cause which is the fact there was no event organizer or coordination. I remember going to a PSY concert (I know…) in 2012 in Seoul’s City Hall area and it was so packed I could barely move. I was almost standing on other people’s shoes. So I’m not totally surprised this has happened unfortunately.
This on the other hand (and here I have no idea of its veracity) is more plausible, especially given how social media works.
It could easily be proven or disproven through big data analysis, to see if such a rumour helped to trigger a larger-than-expected rush of people to Itaewon.
Guy
Did it all happen on that one street or in multiple locations?
Are there any Google Map links to the locations to see what the streets normally look like?
Google Maps has an emergency link.
View the Itaewon incident on Google Maps
Those alerts aren’t super useful at the moment, isn’t it?
It’s been disproven.
I never believe any theory when the words free and drugs go together. People don’t just give out free drugs.
I don’t know if it’s just me, when I see a big crowd. I leave. I avoid big crowds, I find it unpleasant and potentially dangerous.
So they were coming from two different streets to the same spot, smashing people caught in the middle? I’m watching some videos, pretty desolating to see so many people doing CPR…
Did people not try and get into shops/bars?
They did, and the assholes shoved them back or locked them out.