Overwhelmed Ken Fallas couldn’t comprehend what was happening as he saw a dozen or more comatose partygoers being carried out from a small backstreet filled with kids dressed as movie characters.
Fallas, a Costa Rican architect who has worked in Seoul for the past eight years, said Saturday’s Halloween festivities at the city’s nightlife district of Itaewon were a long-awaited occasion to hang out with fellow expats following years of Covid-19 restrictions.
Instead, the 32-year-old was a first-hand observer of one of the worst catastrophes South Korea has ever experienced.
The smartphone video Fallas took following the deadly crowd surge shows groups of Halloween revellers carrying out their unconscious peers, one after another, from an alley near Hamilton Hotel, passing by throngs of people dressed in capes and Miyazaki movie costumes.
While others call for aid above the loud dance music, other people are seen performing CPR on injured persons who are lying on the ground.
Fallas claimed that because of the overwhelming number of injured persons lying on the ground, police and emergency personnel were continually asking with passersby to help if they knew how to perform CPR.
“I saw a lot of [young] people laughing, but I don’t think they were [really] laughing because, you know, what’s funny?” Fallas remarked.
Because they were so terrified, they were laughing. Because it’s difficult to stand in front of something like that. Not everyone is aware of how to interpret that.
When police officers started breaching the lines from behind to approach the injured, Fallas claimed that he and his pals were caught behind the massive crowds of people pouring toward the alley. He claimed that initially, those nearby his group were unaware of what was happening.
We were unable to turn around. Loud music was playing.
Who knew what was going on? Even as the emergency unfolded in front of us, people were still having a good time, the man claimed. “We wondered, ‘What’s happening from here, where can we go?'” There wasn’t a way out.
Witness recounts terrifying crowd surge in Seoul
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