More than 150 people died during the Seoul Halloween fracas on Saturday. Videos posted on social media showed Seoul’s oblique 10-foot-wide lane crammed with people moving in many directions.
Countless bystanders complained about the lack of crowd control measures. While the National Police Agency was quoted to have sent a total of 137 police officers to the district on Saturday, their orders were to restrain the commission of crimes during the Seoul Halloween celebration, not crowd control.
Seoul Halloween ruckus due to lack of massive gathering manual – The Independent World News
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No manual for big crowds
In a statement to the NPR, Public Order Management Bureau chief, Hong Ki-Hyun admitted the police’s failure to foresee mass fatalities during gatherings and articulated his misgivings about the police not having a manual for huge assemblies with no accountable organizer.
Police deployment is not the solution
The police, on the other hand, retorted to defend their position. According to these officers, 137 personnel were originally dispatched to Itaewon, the site where the Seoul Halloween event took place. However, it was not clear how many men were tasked to control the crowd.
In a statement to VOANews, Lee Sang-min, South Korea’s minister of Interior and Safety overseeing police nationwide said that “This was not a problem that could have been solved by deploying police or firefighters in advance.”
Analysts acknowledged that a larger number of police would not have prevented the outpouring of people during the Seoul Halloween event. A comprehensive plan to regulate the movement of a massive crowd was what was necessary.
Police have not established what precisely triggered the fatal rush that day, which led to a swarm of people being buried at the bottom of that tiny backstreet.
The Saturday pandemonium turned into national grief, CNN reported. Numerous victims’ families have congregated at an adjoining site in Itaewon as officials raced to identify bodies of the dead and collect names of those missing.
Over 90% of the dead have been identified, according to the Minister of Interior and Safety, Lee Sang-min in a conference on Sunday. He added that roughly 10 people cannot be named because they are under 17 years old with no national ID cards yet, while a few are foreigners.
According to authorities within the city government, a good number of people are still missing, with nervous families calling hospitals and going to funeral parlors. By 2 p.m. local time on Sunday, over 3,580 missing persons have been reported.
President Yoon ordered an exhaustive inquiry into the cause of the Seoul Halloween 
tragedy. He further called for improvements in safety measures that can be utilized for huge crowds where there is no set organizer, reported Reuters.
While South Korea has a manual for commemorations and holidays that are expected to draw more than 1,000 people, the manual is confined to the organization of people who will take charge of safety planning and the requisition of government resources.
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