DP lawmaker accused of delaying medical team's arrival at Itaewon crush scene

Democratic Party Rep. Shin Hyun-young in the early hours of Oct. 30 is at the scene of a crowd crush in Itaewon, central Seoul, that took 158 lives. [SHIN HYUN-YOUNG FACEBOOK]

Democratic Party (DP) lawmaker Shin Hyun-young has been accused of having delayed the emergency response medical team's arrival at Itaewon after the crowd crush on Oct. 29 that took the lives of 158 people.

According to a report Monday by the JoongAng Ilbo, an affiliate of the Korea JoongAng Daily, the dispatched emergency medical team from Myongji Hospital took 54 minutes to arrive at the scene of the accident, 20 minutes longer than the estimated time, as it made a stop to allegedly pick up DP Rep. Shin.

The emergency team from Myongji Hospital was among the 15 Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs) from 14 hospitals dispatched to Itaewon, including those from Seoul National University Hospital and Hanyang University Hospital, on the night and early morning hours of Oct. 29 and Oct. 30.

Some DMAT teams, including those coming from hospitals farther away from Itaewon than Myongji Hospital, arrived almost half an hour earlier.

Myongji Hospital, located in Goyang, Gyeonggi, is 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) from Itaewon, whereas Ajou University Hospital in Suwon, Gyeonggi, is 36.3 kilometers away and Uijeongbu St. Mary’s Hospital in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi, is 35.3 kilometers away.

Yet these teams arrived after just 26 and 36 minutes.

The Myongji Hospital team was found to have made a detour to an apartment complex in Mapo District, western Seoul, where Shin lives. Shin’s husband, a dentist, was also reported to have been on board.

She told the JoongAng Ilbo that she met up with the DMAT on their way to the scene as she thought it would be best to share information on the situation while on the move.

However, she said she had no obligation to explain the details of where she boarded the vehicle.

Shin, who used to work as a doctor at Myongji Hospital, in the early morning hours of Oct. 30 posted on her Facebook that she was at the scene of the accident as part of the hospital's emergency medical support team and that the Myongji Hospital’s “Doctor Car” arrived there at 1:40 a.m.

But by the time the Myongji Hospital emergency team arrived, most of the emergency measures such as transferring patients in critical condition to nearby hospitals had already been done.

According to a report from the Myongji Hospital emergency team obtained by the JoongAng Ilbo, the other emergency teams had already taken care of the people in critical condition by the time they arrived.

The Myongji Hospital team left 40 minutes later.

Shin was later reported to have stayed at the scene for just 15 minutes before leaving for the National Medical Center in Dongdaemun District, eastern Seoul, in the Health Minister's vehicle.

After the JoongAng Ilbo's report was released, the DP lawmaker in a Facebook post on Tuesday argued that Myongji Hospital’s DMAT arrival wasn’t delayed because of her.

She claimed that a 119 emergency response team located in Hwacheon, Goyang, not far from Myongji Hospital and only 19 kilometers away from Itaewon, took 48 minutes to arrive.

“DMATs from seven hospitals in Gyeonggi were requested, and Myongji Hospital's was the fourth to arrive,” she said in the post.

In another post later in the day, Shin said she would give up her seat on the National Assembly's special committee investigating the Itaewon disaster.

She said she joined the emergency team as she believed that she would be a greater help if she went there not as a legislator but as a doctor in a medical team.

“I deeply apologize if I had been the cause of any inconvenience in disaster response due to me joining,” Shin said.

Shin became a lawmaker in 2020 as a proportional representative of the DP.

Meanwhile, the DP joined other liberal parties to launch a probe into the Itaewon disaster on Monday despite opposition by the People Power Party (PPP).

The PPP has argued that the DP has broken its promise to first work on passing next year’s budget, which passed its deadline, before starting on the probe.

BY LEE CHANG-HOON, LEE HO-JEONG [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]