'1L People in 4-m Wide Lane, Layered on Others Like Tomb': Witnesses Recount Seoul Stampede Horror

More than 150 people were killed and scores more were injured in a deadly stampede at a packed Halloween event in Seoul’s popular Itaewon district late Saturday, in one of South Korea’s worst-ever accidents.

The incident happened when hundreds of people packed in a narrow alley in Itaewon near the Hamilton hotel. Reports claimed the alleyway where the stampede happened was only four metres wide and not spacious enough to even fit a Sedan properly.

As many as 100,000 people were in the alley and a huge crowd was going out of the hotel and also from the Itaewon subway station, according to a report in Hindustan Times. The crowd surge and crush happened in the district, where people mostly in their teens and 20s — had gone to celebrate Halloween, clogging the area’s narrow alleyways and winding streets.

“There were so many people just being pushed around and I got caught in the crowd and I couldn’t get out at first too,” 30-year-old Jeon Ga-eul told AFP.

Earlier, eyewitnesses have described being trapped in a narrow, sloping alleyway, scrambling to get out of the suffocating crowd as people ended up piling on top of one another.

“The high number of casualties was the result of many being trampled during the Halloween event,” fire official Choi Seong-beom told reporters at the scene, adding that the death toll could climb.

The event was the first Halloween event after the Covid restrictions were lifted.

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol declared a period of national mourning Sunday, saying the government would pay for the medical care of those injured and the funerals of those who died.

“In the centre of Seoul, a tragedy and disaster occurred that should not have happened,” Yoon said in a national address.

Wearing green jackets that denote a national emergency, Yoon and other top officials visited the scene of the accident early Sunday and spoke to emergency workers, footage on local TV showed.

AFP photos from the scene showed scores of bodies spread on the pavement covered by bed sheets and emergency workers dressed in orange vests loading even more bodies on stretchers into ambulances.

“People were layered on top of others like a tomb. Some were gradually losing their consciousness while some looked dead by that point,” one eye-witness told the Yonhap News Agency.

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