Witnesses recount horrors of South Korea's 'Hell-like' Halloween crush

Concerned relatives raced to hospitals in search of their loved ones on Sunday, as South Korea mourned the deaths of more than 150 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s who got trapped and crushed after a huge Halloween party crowd surged into a narrow alley in a nightlife district in Seoul.

Witnesses said the crowd surge on Saturday night in the Itaewon area caused “a hell-like” chaos.

An estimated 100,000 thousand people had attended the Halloween festivities. 

Some people were bleeding from their noses and mouths while being given CPR, witnesses said, while others clad in Halloween costumes continued to sing and dance nearby, possibly without knowing the severity of the situation.

“I still can’t believe what has happened. It was like a hell,” said Kim Mi Sung, an official at a nonprofit organisation that promotes tourism in Itaewon.

Kim said she performed CPR on 10 people who were unconscious and nine of them were declared dead on the spot. 

Kim said the 10 were mostly women wearing witch outfits and other Halloween costumes.

People fell 'like dominoes' 

It was not immediately clear what led the crowd to surge into the narrow, downhill alley. One survivor said many people fell and toppled one another “like dominoes” after they were pushed by others.

The survivor, surnamed Kim, said they were trapped for about an hour and a half before being rescued, as some people shouted “Help me!” and others were short of breath, according to the Seoul-based Hankyoreh newspaper.

READ MORE: South Korea declares national mourning after more than 150 die in stampede

Another survivor, Lee Chang-kyu, said he saw about five or six men push others before one or two began falling, according to the newspaper.

The crowd surge is the country’s worst disaster in years. As of Sunday evening, officials put the death toll at 153 and the number of injured people at 133. 

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said the death count could further rise as 37 of the injured people were in serious conditions.

'Once you go there, you cannot move'

In an interview with news channel YTN, Hwang Min-hyeok, a visitor to Itaewon, said it was shocking to see rows of bodies near the hotel. 

He said emergency workers were initially overwhelmed, leaving pedestrians struggling to administer CPR to the injured lying on the streets. People wailed beside the bodies of their friends, he said.

A man in his 20s said he avoided being trampled by managing to get into a bar whose door was open in the alley, Yonhap news agency reported.

A woman in her 20s surnamed Park told Yonhap that she and others were standing along the side of the alley while others caught in the middle of the alley had no escape.

Park Ji-won, who runs a Middle Eastern restaurant across the street from Hamilton Hotel, said he saw emergency workers bring out people in stretchers among the huge throngs of crowds as he closed his restaurant around 11 PM He had no idea what just happened.

“I just presumed a fight broke out - in my 10-plus years of doing business here, I only saw ambulances when people got assaulted or when there were fires,” Park said.

Park said Itaewon always had large Halloween crowds, even during raging Covid-19 infections last year.

READ MORE: South Korea Halloween crush kills nearly 150

He said shop owners like him usually avoid the narrow alley beside Hamilton Hotel during holiday festivities, because “once you go there, you cannot move or get out".

Around 100 businesses in the Hamilton Hotel area have agreed to shut down their shops through Monday to reduce the number of partygoers who would come to the streets through Halloween day.