SEOUL: Broken glasses. A grubby stuffed toy. Blood-stained running shoes.
The broken and twisted detritus of personal possessions collected from the scene of Seoul’s deadly Halloween crowd surge are a poignant catalogue of young lives lost.
More than 150 people, mostly costumed partygoers in their 20s, were killed in a crush during what was supposed to be a night of post-pandemic celebration in the popular Itaewon nightlife district last Saturday (Oct 29).
Police collected more than 1 tonne of items from the scene and have put them on display in a gym that was briefly used to store bodies from the disaster.
The cavernous space is now filled with row upon row of once-cherished possessions, neatly laid out, each marked with a Post-it note and an identifying number.
Families, who are holding funerals this week, can now go and collect their loved ones’ possessions.
Most victims died trapped in a narrow alleyway. Witnesses described how, with no police or crowd control in sight, confused partygoers pushed and shoved, not realising that people were falling only to be trampled and crushed to death.
As emergency responders reached the scene and managed to drag victims out of the tangled crush of bodies, shoes were lost and clothes ripped off to allow cardiopulmonary resuscitation to be performed.
Police have laid out around 260 items of clothing at the gym – including bits of Halloween costumes – and 256 pairs of shoes. Many items are crumpled, covered in dirt or flecked with dried blood.
One man, visibly shaken, clutched an item of clothing to his chest as he walked around, looking through the detritus of the disaster: Goofy photographs from lost wallets, passports, a Halloween wig.
“Some family members came and left in tears” with their loved one’s items, an officer at the scene told AFP.