A none too surprising outcome

Korea seems to accept that government reparations and fixes have taken care of future problems. The real problem is the dangerous combination of behavioral biases that Koreans exhibit in the context of hazards.

David Oliver Kasdan

The author is a professor of Disaster Management at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul. I’ve been researching disaster management and behavioral biases in Korea since 2014. I arrived in Korea just a couple months before the Sewol ferry disaster which, to this day, still raises powerful emotions of helplessness and frustration to think about it. Shortly thereafter, the Pangyo Techno Valley Festival concert suffered casualties from a preventable oversight. When I awoke this morning to the news of what is being called the “Itaewon Crush,” it was horrifying — but not wholly surprising — that another tragedy had occurred.

For the past year, I have felt that Korea was in a fragile state. The echoing of protests throughout the city and a palpable nervous tension have imbued Seoul. It is as though we are waiting for something bad to happen. North Korean saber-rattling, economic malaise, Covid surges, weather events, and a host of social spats have left an uneasiness that my informal surveys have revealed as shared by many others, Korean and foreigner alike. And that is part of it: Koreans are patient and they wait for the world around them to set a trend, yet then they become “fast followers,” doing what the West has demonstrated but better and more efficiently.

This is not to criticize Koreans for a lack of innovation, but that they appear to need that innovation to be institutionalized in order for it to make headway. K-pop and Hallyu culture are a testament to Korean talent, but it is only known because it is filtered and processed through the institutions that it has become a phenomenon.

Shoes and sneakers are waiting for owners in a multipurpose gym near the Yongsan District office, Tuesday, after they were lost in a fatal crowd crush in Itaewon on Saturday before Halloween. [WOO SANG-JO]

This ceding to hierarchically organized development is part of the Neo-Confucian traditions: deference to authority and social harmony are important foundations that make so much of Korea work very well. But they can also lead Korea into a crowded alley with no way out. Two weeks ago, there was panic when Kakao suffered a blackout due to what seems a significant oversight. The reaction was near hysteria as people seemed to forget that you can still use common sense means of communication and that the commercial services that we enjoy are not public institutions in place for our costless benefit. It was yet another example of Koreans being surprised and lost when everyday conveniences were mildly disrupted. President Yoon stepped up with a call for an inquiry, because nothing makes us feel better than knowing the authorities are going to investigate, right?

The collapse of the ventilation shaft grate at the Pangyo Techno Vally Festival is another situation to compare with the Itaewon crush. People were enjoying themselves and behaved in a way that would have given pause if common sense had prevailed, but as one person got on the grate, others saw an opportunity and joined in. Should there have been a warning sign? Should it have been cordoned off? Should it have been built better to withstand the weight of a small crowd in the unlikely event that there was reason to climb on top for a better view? Again, the official response was to reinforce all such grates and post warning signs.

While it is too early to know why hundreds of young partygoers initially pushed into a narrow alley off of Itaewon-ro, the reasons that such a crowd would bloom into an oxygen-starved death trap are understandable from a perspective of biases in disaster mitigation. These biases come from the fields of behavioral economics/social psychology, which is only now gaining recognition in non-Western countries. My research has found that Korea is particularly susceptible to the biases of the bystander effect, herding, and convenience. They can be lumped together as variations of social norms, meaning that people tend to do what others are doing because it will legitimate their choices as being collectively acceptable, even if strict economic logic might dictate otherwise.

A simple example is when waiting to cross the street in the absence of any traffic, people will remain at the curb for the green light before proceeding. But if one person decides to go ahead and cross before the safe signal, others will follow. It is a common and reasonable — if not rational — thing to do. It works both ways; people will hesitate to make a decision until somebody else does, but they will also resist making that decision if nobody else does it first. We see these instances of irrational behavior amplified in group or crowd settings.

The annual religious pilgrimage known as the Hajj in Saudi Arabia suffered stampede casualties for many years until strict crowd control measures were enacted. The recent tragedy at a football match in Malang, Indonesia, demonstrated how crowd behavior can quickly become dangerous even as officials tried to control the chaos. As the Sewol ferry sank and the water came up to their necks, students remained in their cabins because the ship’s authority told them to do so. If more students had taken some initiative in the name of self-preservation, the social proof of the reasonableness of that action would have taken effect and many lives might have been saved. At the Pangyo Techno Valley Festival, one person thought it a good idea to get a better view of the concert by climbing on the ventilation shaft grate and the rest followed. As the music pulsed, people danced and jumped on the metal cover without looking down into the depths of their fate. In Itaewon, a lively crowd attracted more people to the narrow alley, defying the notion that crowds are inherently dangerous these days with random violence, Covid-19, and terrorism. A moment of sober hesitation about entering the throng could have eased the density of the moment. Korean responses to these kinds of disasters are too little too late.

In the field of disaster management, we have been campaigning for decades to emphasize mitigation of risks and preparedness. Pre-disaster efforts are much more effective and economic than the response and recovery phase. Yet other than a reactionary wariness of such hazards after the fact, Korea seems to accept that government reparations and fixes have taken care of any future problems. The real problem is behavior, particularly the dangerous combination of behavioral biases that Koreans exhibit in the context of hazards. This is not to criticize Korea in the least; it is merely an honest self-assessment (from a long-time foreigner) about how such situations evoke vulnerabilities that we can now identify and attempt to rectify.