South Korea: How the Halloween tragedy unfolded
By Oliver Slow
BBC News
30 October 2022
Updated 2 November 2022
Itaewon scene
IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES
After more than 150 people died in a deadly crush in Seoul on Saturday night, the BBC looks at how the tragedy unfolded.
Gathering crowds
Thousands of mainly young people had converged in Itaewon in the centre of the South Korean capital of Seoul.
It's a lively party spot with many narrow streets and alleys filled with bars and restaurants.
Some accounts say more than 100,000 had descended on the area that evening.
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The neighbourhood is served by Itaewon metro station, and videos on social media show streams of people arriving to celebrate Halloween from early evening on Saturday.
Nuhyil Ahammed, 32, was in the crowd. The IT worker from India lives nearby and had been to Halloween parties in Itaewon before, but says things were very different this year.
Crowds gathering before the crush
IMAGE SOURCE, NUHYIL AHAMMED
Image caption,
Large crowds gathered in Itaewon a few hours before the crush
"It was crazy," he told the BBC. "From 5pm there were too many people on the streets. So I was thinking, what's it going to be like from seven or eight?"
Around this time, social media messages were being posted online with people saying that the streets of the district were so crowded they felt unsafe.
The first call to police from Itaewon came at 18:34 local time - several hours before the deadly crush took place in an alley off the main road.
"That alley is really dangerous right now people going up and down, so people can't come down, but people keep coming up, it's gonna be crushed. I barely made it to get out but it's too crowded. I think you should control it," the caller said.
The police officer asked if the caller meant that people weren't flowing well, that "they get crushed and fall, and then there's going to be a big accident?"
Yes, the caller responded - "this is so chilling right now".
The police officer told the first caller they would send someone "to go and check it out" - but no significant reinforcements were sent for hours.
Police at Itaewon
IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES
Image caption,
South Korea's police chief has said their emergency response was "inadequate"
Authorities said they had 137 officers on the ground at Itaewon that night. But they were clearly outmatched by the many thousands that flocked to the area.
Videos show people converging into a narrow alley next to the Hamilton shopping mall where the worst overcrowding was reported.
There were at least ten more emergency calls from the area in the next three and a half hours, for which the police have taken the unusual step of releasing transcripts.
Graphic showing where the 11 calls made to emergency services between 18:34 and 22:11 local time were made in relation to the scene of the fatal crush and the fact that calls 1,2, 5 and 6 resulted in police being mobilized
The next few calls started coming
