Experts question safety measures to prevent second Itaewon disaster

Social Affairs

Published: 25 Oct. 2023, 18:52 Updated: 25 Oct. 2023, 19:56

Experts question safety measures to prevent second Itaewon disaster

An ″intelligent″ CCTV hangs above a the street in Hongdae, a popular nightlife area in Mapo District, western Seoul. The CCTV can broadcast an alert when it detects a potential crowd crush. [LEE CHAN-KYU]

The government promised to implement more stringent safety measures to prevent a repeat of last Halloween's tragic crowd crush in Seoul's Itaewon nightlife district, which left 159 people dead.

However, despite that promise, safety measures to prevent overcrowding remain vague and underfunded.

After the tragedy, the government studied existing public safety protocols and drew up a “comprehensive plan for rebuilding the national safety system” consisting of five strategic goals and 97 specific tasks to be accomplished by 2027.

However, according to analysis conducted by the JoongAng Ilbo and a team of experts, only 30 of those tasks are pre-emptive measures designed to prevent a disaster before it takes place.

More than 50 are focused on providing support after disasters happen.

“It is an incomplete plan which places too much budgetary emphasis on post-disaster relief,” said Jeong Sang-man, the head of the Korea Institute of Disaster and Safety, who argued the plan should focus more on disaster prevention and preparation.

The overall progress of the plan's implementation has been poorly managed, according to the experts interviewed by the JoongAng Ilbo. Despite 13 tasks being marked as accomplished, few visible developments or improvements have occurred.

In one example, the task to provide “solutions to alleviate overcrowding on subway cars in the metropolitan area” is now marked as complete, with the government noting the introduction of additional buses since April to reduce congestion levels during rush hour.

Average congestion levels on Gimpo Gold Line [JoongAng Ilbo]

Yet the average passenger density of trains on the Gimpo Gold Line has remained more than 200 percent, bringing into question the effectiveness of the additional buses.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport is working on supplementary guidelines with a consulting company.

The task of dismantling illegal structures is also marked as finished. However, an examination of the Itaewon crowd crush site showed that authorities rectified only the six illegal structures in the area.

Experts believe an illegal structure attached to the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon made the adjacent alleyway narrower and contributed to the crowd crush.

Experts interviewed by the JoongAng Ilbo also criticized that many unaccomplished tasks lack clear goals, impeding their implementation.

One task set by the government includes operating a full-time disaster-safety situation room at each local government office.

However, the progress report section addressing progress on this task only said that the government “encourages the installation of a full-time disaster-safety situation room at the local government level.”

Out of 228 local governments nationwide, 107 have not drafted a plan for installing a disaster safety situation room.

“The government still lacks detailed action plans,” said Song Chang-young, a professor specializing in disaster and safety at Gwangju University.

After the Itaewon crowd crush, Korea's health and safety authorities realized that a real-time crowd monitoring system could help them take prompt action.

An ″intelligent″ CCTV automatically measures the density level on the street. [SEOUL METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT]

The government plans to install “intelligent” closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras to measure crowd density in real time.

When four or more people are in an area of one square meter (10.76 square feet), the CCTV sends an alarm to the control room at each district office, police agency and people in the area. People in danger due to high crowd density can also be alerted via an electronic display board and megaphone attached to the CCTV.

In the neighborhood around Hongik University in Mapo District, Western Seoul, such CCTV cameras were installed in June to prevent stampedes or crowd crushes.

However, funding for this real-time monitoring system remains insufficient. Each CCTV camera costs 10 million won ($7,426), but the government secured only 10 billion won, enough for only 100 cameras.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government decided to earmark an additional 7.8 billion won ($5,792,498) for the system to compensate for the shortfall.

However, the central government has yet to set a specific target number on how many intelligent CCTVs it plans to install.

Most previously installed CCTVs cannot be retrofitted for use in a real-time monitoring and feedback system, with more than 14 percent installed over a decade ago.

Experts have expressed concern that the overall plan could languish as a hindsight solution instead of fundamentally preventing safety failures in the future.

“Although the danger of overcrowding came to public attention after the Itaewon crowd crush, the risks have been well known since the crowd crush at Busan Municipal Stadium in 1959, when 67 people died because a huge number of people rushed toward a narrow exit from an open sports field to escape the pouring rain,” said Choi Hee-chun, head of the research center at the Seoul-based Asia Safety Education Agency.

Jeong noted that the central government should delegate the responsibility for implementing safety controls to local governments and focus on oversight.

“Local governments should have the authority to manage crowd density levels, and the central government should help nurture their capabilities,” Jeong added.

BY YUN JUNG-MIN, HA JUN-HO, LEE YOUNG-KEUN, LEE CHAN-KYU, LEE SOO-JUNG [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]