Interior Ministry Received the President’s Second Instructions on the Itaewon Crowd Crush “Through the Press”

Acting Commissioner General of the National Fire Agency Nam Hwa-yeong, Commissioner General of the National Police Agency Yoon Hee-keun, Minister of the Interior and Safety Lee Sang-min, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, Yongsan-gu District Mayor Park Hee-young, Commissioner of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Kim Kwang-ho, and Minister of Personnel Management Kim Seung-ho (from left) listen to questions by lawmakers in the Public Administration and Security Committee meeting at the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul on December 7. Bak Min-gyu, Senior Reporter

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety found out about the president’s second set of instructions on the day of the Halloween crowd crush in Itaewon through the press. The interior ministry oversees the nation’s response to disasters, and that they did not receive the president’s instructions directly but only through the press has triggered criticism of holes in the country’s disaster management system.

According to the presidential instructions received by the interior ministry on the day of the Itaewon crowd crush, which the special committee for a parliamentary inquiry into the incident confirmed on December 23, the interior ministry admitted that they received the second set of instructions from President Yoon Suk-yeol--given on the night of October 29, the day of the crowd crush--“through the press.” This was the ministry’s answer when the lawmakers asked the time when the central disaster and safety monitoring office in the ministry received the two sets of presidential instructions from the Office of the President situation room. In other words, the president’s second instructions were never directly delivered to the interior ministry.

According to the ministry, the Office of the President released the president’s instructions to the press at 11:36 p.m. on the night of the tragedy. The national situation room in the Office of the President conveyed the instructions to the interior ministry through a text message and phone call a minute later at 11:37 p.m.

The problem was the second set of instructions. The situation room conveyed the president’s second instructions seventeen minutes after sending the first set of instructions to the ministry, at 11:54 p.m. The second set of instructions included directions, such as, “All related ministries and agencies, with the minister of the interior and safety at the center, should do their utmost to provide emergency rescue and treatment for victims,” and “The Ministry of Health and Welfare should quickly operate an emergency medical system and promptly dispatch a disaster medical assistance team (DMAT) and secure emergency beds in nearby hospitals.”

The situation room released the president’s second set of instructions to the press as well, but it appears the interior ministry never directly received it. The fact that the interior ministry--the ministry in charge of disaster management--obtained the president’s instructions through the press has drawn fire as it reveals the ineffectiveness of the national disaster response system. Even when we take into consideration the urgency of the situation, agencies that should swiftly respond to disaster situations failed to properly communicate with each other. The Kyunghyang Shinmun asked the interior ministry several times if they obtained the president’s second set of instructions through the press, but the ministry did not state their position on this issue.

Earlier, the interior ministry stirred controversy for not distributing the president’s second instructions to central agencies including the police agency and to local governments through the national disaster management system (NDMS). The interior ministry explained, “The instructions related to the interior ministry’s jurisdiction were the same as the first set of instructions, so we did not send out a separate notice. And we confirmed that the instructions that fell in the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health and Welfare were delivered to the health ministry.”

The disaster management system (NDMS) is a government platform that was introduced in 2005 to handle all kinds of disaster situations. The interior ministry announced that since adopting the NDMS, the government reduced the time to identify a disaster situation and communicate the status from the previous 16-35 minutes to around 2 minutes.