South Korea Halloween crush: Seoul tests crowd safety plan ahead of anniversary

In order to analyze group activity and concentration before alerting officials to signs of danger, about 150 participants took part in the dry work of an early warning system that will include 909 CCTV cams in 71 locations by year’s end.

When three or more people are counted in every square metre of any given area, officials will be ready to act and evacuate people in sixteen areas.

City safety official Ahn Hyoung – jun said,” In the past, it used to be visual assessment, but now we’re operating CCTV… which enables video analysis ,” adding that the data gathered would make up for human error.

The effort was” positive ,” according to Paek Seung-joo, a fire and disaster protection expert at the Open Cyber University of Korea, who also cautioned against large gatherings.

” Preventing it from happening in the first place is the basic option.”

The plan, which was unveiled this month, only applies to Seoul and not the whole country, he continued.

In order to prevent crowding, manage it, and act in an emergency, the central government— not a local one — must take the initiative.

Many people of the disaster victims from last year claim that the police investigation left several questions unanswered and expressed regret that no one had been held accountable for the deaths.

The government has stated that it had worked hard to set up a method to avoid such disasters and that this method needed to be properly implemented. However, the government had rejected calls to fire leading officials.