SEOUL: In tears, Philomene Aby’s hands shook as she asked workers at a South Korean community centre for news of her 22-year-old son, missing in the wake of a crowd surge in Seoul that left at least 151 people dead on Saturday (Oct 29).
Her son, Masela, went to work at a club in the city’s Itaewon area around 6pm on Saturday. That was the last time Aby, a Seoul resident from the Ivory Coast, saw him.
“I called his number but … he wasn’t answering,” Aby told Reuters while standing in the Hannam-dong Community Service Center, which became a makeshift missing persons facility in the wake of the disaster.
Bureaucrats who typically handle birth certificates or housing registrations sought to help hundreds of distraught people seeking details of their relatives.
Officers at the centre manned emergency phone lines, taking hundreds of frantic calls to find missing people.
According to a Reuters witness, one person broke down and kneeled on the floor after speaking to some officials at the centre. A whiteboard in the main office lists updated numbers of calls every hour, totalling more than 3,580 since 5.30am local time on Sunday.
“No one is telling me the truth,” said Aby, who has lived in Seoul with her son for 18 years. With no sign of news about the son, Aby left the centre for the Ivory Coast embassy.