The Day After the Itaewon Crowd Crush, Officials Were Instructed to Delete the Expression “Crowd Crush” in a Meeting Presided by President Yoon

On October 30, the day after the Halloween crowd crush in Itaewon, President Yoon Suk-yeol presided over a meeting in which an instruction was given to refer to the Itaewon crowd crush as the Itaewon accident, leaving the words “crowd crush” out.

Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Shin Hyun-young of the special committee for a parliamentary inquiry to uncover the truth of the disaster in Itaewon, Yongsan and to prevent future disasters, raised the allegation on December 7 based on a mobile messenger conversation between officials from the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the National Emergency Medical Center.

According to the details of the conversation obtained by lawmaker Shin’s office, Park Hyang, director of public health policy in the health ministry, said to the official in the National Emergency Medical Center who reported the status of casualties, “According to the result of a meeting presided by the president today, we ask that you exclude the words ‘crowd crush’ from the Itaewon crowd crush and refer it as the Itaewon accident.” The Medical Center staff replied, “We will change it to the Itaewon accident,” and Park replied, “Thank you.”

Lawmaker Shin believed that the government was busy evading responsibility rather than responding in a responsible manner. Shin said, “We need to find out whether they were trying to cleverly distort the nature of the October 29 disaster and downplay the incident rather than uncover the dreadful truth of the accident and resolve the situation.”

On Wednesday, Lee Soo-jin, spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Korea on the floor released a comment and argued, “The instruction to delete the words ‘crowd crush’ following the immoral suggestion to conduct an autopsy on the victim of the Itaewon disaster reveals that the Yoon Suk-yeol government was busy evading responsibility rather than resolving the situation.” She asked, “What was the reason for telling them to avoid using the words ‘crowd crush’ when it was clearly a crowd crush? Were they looking for another cause of the disaster?” Lee further said, “Perhaps they wanted it to be a drug-related accident and not a crowd crush.”

The Democratic Party spokesperson also said, “We need to conduct a proper parliamentary inquiry. The Yoon Suk-yeol government must state who ordered the words ‘crowd crush’ be left out,” and added, “We can no longer tolerate a government that avoids responsibility for the disaster and neglects actions to take on the least of responsibilities.”

The Kyunghyang Shinmun attempted several phone calls to get an explanation from Park, but they were never answered. Hyeon Su-yeop, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Welfare said, “The spokesperson’s office has no particular answer in relation to this case.”