Without Halloween decorations or people in costumes and with enormous security devices and a new closed-circuit camera system to anticipate crowds. This is how you live this weekend Seoul the first anniversary of the human avalanche that was charged 159 lives in the Itaewon neighborhood.
In the last decade, for any twenty-something in South Korea, Itaewon, famous for being the most multicultural neighborhood in the city, was the place to celebrate Halloween with costumes, alcohol and music until the early hours of the morning. The night of Saturday, October 29, 2022 changed everything.
After almost three years of restrictions caused by the pandemic, some 100,000 people, eager to be able to celebrate freely again, took to the streets of this neighborhood that once housed the largest US military base in South Korea and is a meeting point for the LGBTI community and home to the largest Muslim community in the country.
The town hall of Yongsanwhere it is located Itaewondid not prepare any specific police device even though local businessmen had warned that in previous years the crowd had reached dangerous levels.
The emergency services in turn dismissed dozens of calls from pedestrians who, hours before the avalanche, had warned about crowds.