Witnesses describe ‘a hell’ inside South Korean crowd surge

Seoul, South Korea, Nov.1: In one moment, thousands of Halloween revellers crammed into the narrow, vibrant streets of Seoul’s most cosmopolitan neighbourhood, eager to show off their capes, wizard hats and bat wings.

In the next, a surge of panic spread as an unmanageable mass of people jammed into a narrow alley in Itaewon. Toppled revellers were trapped for as long as 40 minutes, stacked on one another “like dominoes” in a chaotic crush so intense that clothes were ripped off.

A stunned Seoul was just beginning on Monday to put together the huge scope of the crowd surge on Saturday night that killed at least 154, mostly people in their 20s and 30s, including foreign nationals. Officials said they expected more deaths because there were nearly 150 others injured, 33 of them in serious conditions.

Witnesses described a nightmarish scene as people performed CPR on the dying and carried limp bodies to ambulances, while dance music pulsed from garish clubs lit in bright neon. Others tried desperately to pull out those trapped at the bottom of the crush of people, but often failed because there were too many of the fallen on top of them.

 “We were just stuck together so tightly we couldn’t even shift to call out and report the situation,” said one survivor, surnamed Lee. “We were strangers, but we held each others’ hands and repeatedly shouted out, ‘Let’s survive!’”

Kim Mi Sung, who works for a non-profit organization in Itaewon, told The Associated Press that nine out of the 10 people she gave CPR to eventually died. Many were bleeding from their noses and mouths. Most were women who dressed as witches or were in other Halloween costumes; two were foreigners.

“It was like a hell,” Kim said. “I still can’t believe what happened.”

In this ultra-wired, high-tech country, anguish, terror and grief — as well as many of the details of what happened — are playing out most vividly on social media. Users posted messages desperately seeking friends and loved ones, as witnesses and survivors described what they went through.

“I thought I was dying,” one woman said in posts on Twitter. “My entire body was stuck among everyone else, while people laughed from a terrace and videotaped us. I thought I would really die if I cried out. I stretched my hands out to (others) who were above me and I managed to get out.” (AP)