I've never been a fan of Itaewon, the foreigner-heavy district in Seoul that sits at the foot of Namsan, the little mountain that pokes up in the middle of the city like a stiff nipple. I go to Itaewon when I have to, e.g., when I need to buy foreign ingredients that are otherwise hard to track down. Occasionally, I'll go there to satisfy a Western-food jones when I can't cook something for myself (like proper New York pizza). Otherwise, I find Itaewon to be a place for expats who have no interest in learning about or exploring their country of residence—people who spend their time in bars speaking English, downing beers, and leading sad lives devoid of any desire to get to know the real Korea.
There was a deadly stampede in Itaewon last night. With Halloween just a day away, Itaewon is party central, and it seems that a huge weekend crowd got pushy, causing a bunch of people to fall over and get crushed. This pileup turned into an even more massive, sclerotic people-jam, resulting in, as of this writing, 146 deaths, with that number expected to rise. That's a huge death toll, and there obviously has to be much more to this story.
Selfishly, I'm thinking to myself that my introversion and Itaewon-aversion saved my life last night. And now that Itaewon has basically turned into a giant tomb, I have even less reason to visit the place.
I imagine there'll be updates as this sad and stupid story develops. I doubt I'm the only one thinking such a disaster was preventable.
Will we get improved safety measures from all this, or just another memorial plaque? Korea periodically suffers huge losses of human life from totally preventable tragedies. It's all quite random and discomfiting. Safety standards here are not what they should be. At the same time, people will automatically blame the government for things like a stampede, which was caused by local human behavior, not government policy. The people want freedom on the one hand and government guidance of behavior on the other. So one side of my brain sees the tragedy as part of the inevitable price for freedom while another side focuses on the preventability of it all, although for me, "preventability" has more to do with how people in Itaewon could have conducted themselves versus how the government could have put rules and procedures in place. Given Koreans' tendency to ignore rules and procedures, anyway, I don't see how new measures would have helped in this case.
(Credit to my buddy Mike for breaking this news to me last night as I was about to hit the sack. Otherwise, I would've found out only after waking up.)
UPDATE: ROKDrop posts on the tragedy and has a bunch of Twitter videos up showing the chaos on the streets.
UPDATE 2: your Korean word for the day is apsa/압사, i.e., death by crushing. The Sino-Korean word ap/압 means "pressure." Sa/사 means "death." Google Translate renders 압사 as "stampede." Make of that what you will, but if you type "stampede" into Translate, you get 우르르 도망치게 하다 or just 우르르 도망치다 for the verbal forms.
UPDATE 3: we are receiving texts from the government about how to handle the disaster, such as "stay away from party sites in Itaewon" and "watch out for traffic restrictions in place since the disaster happened," etc.
UPDATE 4: death toll is at least 151 now. 19 were foreign nationals.
I remember Halloween in Itaewon and actually being in that alley behind the Hamilton hotel. Like most of the foreigners I knew, henceforth, Halloween in Itaewon was a place to be avoided. Even in those days, the streets were jam-packed with KOREANS there to party. I'd wager almost all those deaths are not foreigners.
ReplyDeleteThe impression I'm getting from ROKDrop and other sources is that most of the dead are young Korean women.
ReplyDeleteAnd to be clear, I never implied the stampede involved mostly foreigners or was caused by them; I merely noted Itaewon is a foreigner-heavy district. Most people in Itaewon are indeed Korean.