SEOUL (HRNW) – Shocked family members collected bodies, parents searched for children and a country sought answers on Sunday after at least 153 people were crushed to death when a crowd in South Korea surged in an alleyway during Halloween festivities.
President Yoon Suk-yeol declared a period of national mourning and designated Seoul’s popularItaewon district a disaster zone after the Saturday night disaster.
“This news came like a bolt from the blue sky,” said a father who burst into tears as he collected his daughter’s body from a morgue in the nation’s capital.
A huge crowd celebrating in Itaewon surged into an alley, killing at least 153 people, most of them in their 20s, emergency officials said, adding the death toll could rise.
The partiers, some still in their teens and many in Halloween costumes, were ready to enjoy the bars, nightclubs and restaurants where the revelry routinely spills over into narrow and often steep side streets.
Instead, the street became filled with people crying for help, while emergency workers desperately sought to free trapped bodies and perform CPR on people splayed across the debris-littered ground.