A Country That Cannot Protect the Lives of Its Citizens: Government Evading Responsibility While More Voices Call for State Responsibility

After a massive crowd crush occurred in Itaewon, Yongsan-gu, Seoul on the night of October 29, the police search for lost articles at the site of the tragedy on October 30. Kwon Do-hyun

The debate on who is responsible for the Halloween tragedy in Itaewon is pointing towards the government and local government for failing to ensure public safety. The government has been trying to evade responsibility by mentioning the crowd of 100,000 people that day, blaming the people there to celebrate Halloween, and claiming, “There was no way to prevent the incident with the police officers and firefighters available.” And such an attitude from the government has ignited public anger. Experts criticized the government and said, “The government, which should protect the people, did not fulfill the basic responsibility of the state.”

According to the coverage by the Kyunghyang Shinmun on October 31, the police only conducted minimum tasks, such as guiding the passersby near Itaewon Station in Yongsan-gu, Seoul on the night of October 29 when the tragic incident occurred. There was no officer providing safety guidelines or controlling the entry of vehicles near the subway station. According to the guidelines published by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety last year, when a local festival is held, safety officers must first be assigned to the venue. Also, the venue must review the maximum number of people it can accommodate and prepare responses to possible problems on site, but such guidelines were not kept.

The number of police officers assigned to the site of the tragic incident was smaller than previously planned. On the day of the accident, the Yongsan Police Station dispatched only 137 officers to Itaewon, much fewer than the 200 they announced in a prior press release. In addition, more than half of the officers assigned to the area were under cover to crack down on drug users rather than maintain order. This was why a large number of citizens helped provide CPR to victims after the crowd crush, because there was a significant lack of firefighters and police officers.

The response by the central and local governments showed a contrast from the Global Village Festival held in Itaewon on October 15-16. A million people participated in the two-day festival. At the time, the police expected a large crowd to gather and restricted the traffic allowing passage on only one way on some roads at certain times. A total of 1,078 employees of the Yongsan gu office were also on site to help control the traffic and manage safety.

When the public pointed out that the safety management was handled poorly in the latest Halloween celebration, the police simply repeated, “It was an event with no organizer.” A representative of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said, “At the time of the Global Village Festival, it wasn’t the police that blocked the roads, but rather, the festival organizer received permission from the Yongsan gu office.” He added, “In the case of the latest incident, police officers tried to control the area, but they had trouble responding due to the large crowd.”

Kim Young-sik, a professor of police administration at Seowon University said, “Areas where a large crowd gather have a high probability of dangerous situations, so it is a basic security task of the police to enforce restrictions, such as allowing passage in only one direction, and to disperse the crowd.” Professor Kim argued, “If the crowd was too large for the police to handle, then they should have prepared a response accordingly.”

The interior ministry is denying any public responsibility concerning the cause of the latest incident. Minister of the Interior and Safety Lee Sang-min said, “It was not a problem that could have been solved by assigning police officers and firefighters beforehand.” In a briefing by the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters organized by the interior ministry this day, most of the government officials came under fire after repeating the words, “I don’t know,” like a parrot.

The attitude exhibited by the police, which claimed that the tragic incident occurred despite the fact that they handled things as they had in the past, and the words of Minister Lee Sang-min, who insisted that there was nothing that the police could do to prevent such an incident, has led to criticism that the government neglected the fundamental duty of the state, which is to ensure the safety of its citizens. People are asking what the role of the government is if the responsibility for an accident that killed and injured over three hundred people in the center of the nation’s capital lay with the victims or if it was a natural disaster that no one could prevent.

Lee Yoon-ho, a chair professor at the Department of Police Science at the Cyber University of Korea said, “The first mission of the police is to ensure public safety and maintain order. Regardless of whether there was or wasn’t an organizer, they should have controlled passage if too large a crowd gathered.” He also argued, “It’s hard to say that Minister Lee’s comment was appropriate. The interior ministry also had the responsibility of managing and supervising the latest incident.”