Police admit mistakes over South Korean Halloween crowd tragedy

South Korea's police chief has admitted that officers received multiple reports of danger but failed to react "sufficiently" ahead of the deadly crowd movement which cost 156 people their lives at a Halloween event in the capital, Seoul.

More than 150 people lost their lives in Saturday's stampede in the South Korean capital Seoul during a street party to celebrate Halloween. AFP - YELIM LEE

An estimated 100,000 people gathered in Seoul's popular Itaewon nightlife district for a Halloween party, the first since the Covid epidemic.

Because it was not an official event with a designated organiser, neither the police nor local authorities were actively managing the crowd.

"There were multiple reports to the police indicating the seriousness at the site just before the accident occurred," national police chief Yoon Hee-keun said.

"Police knew a large crowd had gathered even before the accident occurred, urgently indicating the danger," he said.

He acknowledged the way this information was handled had been insufficient.

South Korea's interior minister on Tuesday became the first top official to make a clear apology to the public for the disaster, one of the worst in the country's history.

"I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere apologies to the public as the minister in charge of the people's safety for this accident," Lee Sang-min said before bowing his head before lawmakers and cameras.

He promised to investigate what had caused the crowd crush and ensure a disaster on this scale would never happen again.

Crowd control

South Korea is typically strong on crowd control, with protest rallies often so heavily policed that officers can outnumber participants.

But police deployed only 137 officers to Itaewon for Halloween, while 6,500 officers were present at a protest across town attended by about 25,000 people, local reports said.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said on Tuesday that the country needed to improve its system for managing large crowds in the wake of the disaster.

The president called for the country to develop cutting-edge digital capabilities to improve crowd management. Critics claim such tools  exist but were not deployed in Itaewon.

Seoul's City Hall has a real-time monitoring system that uses mobile phone data to predict crowd size. But it was not in use on Saturday night, local media reported.

Itaewon's district authorities did not deploy any safety patrols, with officials saying the Halloween event was not considered as "a festival", which would have required an official plan for crowd control.

On the night, tens of thousands of people thronged a narrow alleyway, with eye-witnesses describing how, with no police or crowd control in sight, confused partygoers pushed and shoved, crushing those trapped in the lane.

Analysts say the tragedy was easily avoidable, even with a small number of police officers.