SEOUL – Is the Itaewon Halloween tragedy President Yoon Suk-yeol’s “Sewol” moment? That’s the question that surfaced on social media just hours after the Saturday night tragedy in which 154 Halloween revelers in Seoul’s Itaewon district were killed in a crowd-crush disaster that shook the nation.
The “Sewol” reference is to the 2014 sinking of the ferry of that name, in which 304 people died – similarly, mostly young people. Not assuaged by convictions of the vessel’s cowardly and incompetent crew, public anger swiftly encompassed first responders for their allegedly botched rescue – and then engulfed president Park Geun-hye herself.
The 2014 disaster lit a slow fuse of simmering animosity. That ignited two years later amid corruption and abuse of power allegations and finally exploded with Park’s impeachment, ejection from power and jailing in 2017.
To be sure, the parallels between the two disasters are inexact.
While Park was furiously accused of failing to display leadership during the 2014 crisis, Yoon was wide awake on Saturday night. He ordered a maximal disaster response, visited the site on Sunday morning, demanded an official investigation and declared a week of national mourning.
But even before the Halloween disaster, Yoon’s popularity ratings were among the lowest-trending in recent South Korean history. Now, as a black swan strikes, an intensely incendiary critique has gone viral.
Some 700 police, it is being alleged and repeated, are assigned to oversee the president’s security but just 200 were assigned to monitor the tens of thousands of partygoers who massed in an entertainment district on Saturday. Sources told Asia Times that the comparison is politicized and dubious.
Still, there are many questions – the key one being, “What conditions led to the huge body count?”
Saturday night carnage
Itaewon is a famed after-hours zone in a capital renowned for some of the liveliest nightlife in the region. Unlike Seoul’s Gangnam (upscale, pricey) and Hongik (artsy, student-focused) districts, Itaewon has always had a foreign vibe.
It grew up as a seedy “camp town” adjacent to a giant US Army base, subsequently expanded into Seoul’s expatriate quarter, and has gentrified of late. For young Koreans, it offers an “abroad at home” experience, with access to foreign cuisines, drinks, lifestyles and festivals – such as Halloween.
Halloween is an imported tradition that, as in Japan, has surged in popularity in recent years. Thousands of youth flock to Itaewon for the festivities and after two years of Covid-19 lockdowns, this year was set to be massive: Widely reported estimates had 100,000 young people flooding the district on Saturday.
By Seoul standards, that is no unmanageable number.
Seoulites are used to intensely crowded public transport and have a predilection for mass gatherings – notably, the “million-man” candlelit protests that led to Park’s overthrow. But there are known protocols for public transport use; protests usually occur in wide boulevards and plazas; and alcohol is not a factor.
Compare and contrast to the high-spirited masses flooding the very constricted geography of Itaewon. The heart of “The ‘Won” is a bar-lined side street behind the landmark Hamilton Hotel: A pedestrian precinct approximately 15 meters wide and around 250 meters long.
A key entry/egress point to/from this side street to Itaweon’s main street, with its subway station, bus stops and parking, is a steep, narrow alleyway. That alley is just a few meters wide and some 40 meters long.
Steepness and narrowness appear to be key causal factors. As the crowd funneled huge numbers into the alley, people at the top tumbled – falls that cascaded down through the crowd in a domino effect.
It proved murderous. Hundreds of partygoers were plowed under a suffocating human wave from which they could not extricate themselves. So far, 154 have been confirmed dead.
Why the vast, dense crowd was not more effectively policed and why choke points were not blocked and controlled, is now a matter of intense debate. Moreover, earlier in the day, Asia Times drove through a series of downtown demonstrations, complete with traffic control, crowd control and barriers emplaced, with entire coach loads of police standing ready.
And yet: Massive, joyous, chaotic Halloween crowds at Itaewon on Halloween are the norm. And there was never a crowd-related tragedy at the festival in prior years.
Yoon’s vulnerabilities
Officialdom seemed both defensive and puzzled.
“I understand that it was not a problem that could have been solved by deploying police or firefighters in advance,” Minister of the Interior and Safety Lee Sang-min told a briefing. “There were various disturbances and protests in several places in downtown Seoul, so police and security forces were somewhat dispersed.”
“It was foreseen that a large number of people would gather…we didn’t expect that large-scale casualties would occur due to the gathering of many people,” Hong Ki-hyun, chief of the National Police Agency’s Public Order Management Bureau admitted on October 31, according to Yonhap News Agency. “I was told that police officers on the scene didn’t detect a sudden surge in the crowd.”
The country is in trauma mode. But as anger builds, high-profile heads could roll. The head of Yongsan District, which encompasses Itaewon, and the mayor of Seoul, who rushed home from a foreign tour when he heard of the disaster, both hail from Yoon’s conservative People Power Party.
And while pro- and anti-voices in coffee shops and chat rooms furiously debate executive responsibility, precedent suggests the president himself may be in the firing line.
“Yes this absolutely could be his ‘Sewol,’” said David Tizzard, who teaches Korean Studies and is a keen youth watcher at Seoul Women’s University. “What we are seeing is the tragedy is being politicized heavily.”
An especially high-profile metric circulating on social media alludes to policing.
Just 200 extra police were assigned to the district on Saturday night, Yonhap reports. Moreover, their duties were to combat sex, drug and alcohol-related offenses, not carry out crowd control, the report stated.
Meanwhile, some 690-700 police are deployed to manage Yoon’s daily security, the influential left-leaning Hankyoreh daily reported in August.
While the Hankyoreh admitted in its analysis that it could not confirm its numbers – “The police have not disclosed the exact size of these detachments for security reasons” – it provided a detailed breakdown of its estimate. Moreover, the paper’s 700 police figure is a 75% increase on the number assigned to previous presidents, the daily alleged.
The increased requirement is reportedly due to Yoon’s surprise decision to relocate the presidential office. Formerly, the combined presidential office-official residence was the purpose-designed Blue House, or “Cheongwadae”, which sat in a prestige location behind a medieval palace at the foot of a mountain in central Seoul.
But Yoon, who took office in May vowing a more public-facing presidency, shifted to new offices at the Ministry of National Defense compound in Yongsan district, formerly the site of a US Army headquarters. That required new security operations as the president lives at a separate site from his office. Incidentally, the presidential office is within walking distance of Itaewon.
A government official told Asia Times that the analysis is off-whack.
“The protective mission for the president is conducted by the Presidential Security Service, not the local police,” the official told said. “Whether the presidential office is located in Yongsan or the Blue House, the PSS is the only organization in charge of protecting the president.”
Still, the official noted that “…a team of the Metropolitan Police Agency manages the traffic during the president’s commute to [the] presidential office.”
While Asia Times has been unable to discover from official sources the exact number of security and police officials assigned, one commentator expressed caution about the discourse.
“I believe a lot of people are repeating these numbers, 700, that have yet to be verified by official sources,” Tizzard said. Discourse is “…being turned into a political game that detracts from the tragedy.”
And in a country that holds its presidents to harsh account, both during and after their terms in office, risks for leaders are always high.
“Koreans demand responsibility for any disaster, or for whatever,” Yang Sun-mook, a former international relations chair of the Democratic Party, told Asia Times. “Traditionally, if there was a natural disaster, the king was held responsible. That is the tradition.”
US allies hit by domestic black swans
Given ongoing moves within highly strategic Northeast Asia, US officials may be viewing matters affecting Korea’s Yoon, and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, with concern.
China has completed its landmark 20th Communist Party Congress, deeply entrenching assertive President Xi Jinping in an unprecedented third term in office. North Korea, engaged in its busiest-ever year of missile tests, is widely expected to detonate a nuclear device in the near future.
Meanwhile, the US finds itself in the fortunate position of having a South Korean president, Yoon, who not only wants to upgrade security cooperation with the US but – highly unusually – promotes amicable ties with national bete noir Japan.
That suggests that Washington’s long-held hope of building a trilateral security architecture in the region – rather than constantly fighting to bring its two allies, divided over wartime atrocities and related apologies and compensation to the table – is finally within reach.
Moreover, if a seventh North Korean nuclear test goes ahead, Asia Times understands that the reaction could be aimed at China, rather than simply North Korea, with the aim being to compel Beijing to deploy stronger leverage over Pyongyang.
Any such strategy will require buy-in from Seoul and Tokyo, who both do the bulk of their trade with Beijing. Seoul has already felt Beijing’s ire in the form of economic retaliation after the deployment of a US missile defense battery in Korea in 2017.
But Yoon – already battered by an approval rating of just 31.2% early this month – is being forced to pivot from foreign affairs to domestic matters. In this situation, and in a country rife with anti-Japan sentiment, it is unclear how much political capital he can expend.
Likewise, the cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is suffering abysmal approval ratings, as polled earlier this month, of just 27.4%.
Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party is being seriously pummeled by the links between it and the Unification Church – seen by some as a cult. Those ties came into shock focus following the murder of ex-premier Shinzo Abe. His killer’s motive was his anger at Abe’s links to the religious sect.
In a mirror image of Yoon, Kishida must contend with significant sectors of the Japanese polity who do not favor improved relations with Korea. The question for US officials to ponder is to what extent local politics and wider geopolitics are entangled.
“There are multiple variables, it is hard to pin down,” Daniel Pinkston, an international relations expert at Troy University, told Asia Times.
“The external environment and the threat perceptions and incentives for greater bilateral and trilateral security cooperation are not changing,” Pinkston said. “How much does leadership matter? How much do bureaucratic and organizational politics and domestic public opinion matter? It is complex and messy.”
The days and weeks ahead will show how clearly – or not – the Korean public links Yoon to the tragedy. But risks certainly exist, particularly for a president who is not noted for his empathy.
“This is very, very precarious for him,” said Tizzard. “It is up to him to show emotional support – and we have not seen that from President Yoon.”
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