[ANALYSIS] Pinning all blame on police for Itaewon tragedy won't help

Police officers talk to a man mourning for the victims of the deadly crowd crush in central Seoul's Itaewon, Oct. 31. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

Police deserve criticism but must be seen within Korean context: experts

By Jung Min-ho

In the wake of the deadly crowd crush that killed 156 people and injured 152 in central Seoul's Itaewon last weekend, politicians and the media, domestic and international, have been analyzing what went wrong ― and who to blame as the cause of the tragedy.

So far, much of the criticism has focused on Interior Minister Lee Sang-min and the police under his authority. The police clearly deserve much criticism for having dismissed 12 emergency calls coming from Itaewon, as responding to the scene earlier could potentially have prevented or lessened the scale of the Oct. 29 tragedy.

Yoon Hee-keun, head of the National Police Agency, admitted Tuesday there was a problem with the way the police handled the emergency calls from Itaewon and apologized. Later that day, Lee followed suit, apologizing as "a Cabinet member in a position to be infinitely responsible for the people's safety."

Over the past several days, critics have said that the police should have deployed more officers in the area, where a huge crowd had been expected over Halloween weekend. "If police had deployed a sufficient number of officers preemptively for safety management, there would have been no [such] dangerous situation," Rep. Lim O-kyeong, spokeswoman for the opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), said at Wednesday's press briefing at the National Assembly.

But that point of criticism doesn't capture the full picture, experts interviewed by The Korea Times said.

"It is difficult to say that police are to blame for that point," Kim Jin-sook, a lawyer, said. "It was completely unexpected, given that no such incident has ever occurred in Korea, even when enormous crowds (of hundreds of thousands of people) gathered in Seoul for rallies many times just a few years ago … Maybe we have become too used to big crowds and did not feel how dangerous it could be."

Interior Minister Lee said that the number of visitors to Itaewon that day "wasn't particularly high," a comment that brought criticism. Data shows that about 130,000 people visited Itaewon on Saturday for Halloween this year, higher than the 80,000 last year but lower than the 200,000 in 2017. Expecting a bigger crowd, police deployed 137 officers this year, higher than the 85 it sent last year.

The number of police officers surely matters. But another fundamental issue is the law, which requires the police to restrict people's freedom of movement for public safety and order only for government-designated events or rallies notified to police. The law allows (but does not require) such police intervention at "private gatherings" ― crowd control, in other words ― only when there is an imminent danger. Without a clear legal definition, it could be disputable whether streets packed with people can be placed under that category, legal experts say.

The current law was carefully designed to protect people's freedom in a country where police used to abuse power for decades under authoritarian rule. Legal experts say revising the law is not the police's responsibility but must be done by policymakers, especially lawmakers.

"The police enforce only the existing laws," Cho Jin-man, an associate professor of politics at Duksung Women's University, said. "All the relevant institutions, including the police and the National Assembly, should start discussing what rules and policies can fill this risky legal loophole. It is the Assembly's responsibility to mediate between different opinions, say, more freedom versus more government control."

Shoes are seen among a collection of items found in Itaewon after a deadly crowd crush, at a temporary lost-and-found center in Seoul, Nov. 1. Police assembled the crumpled shoes, part of 1.5 tons of personal objects left by the victims and survivors of the tragedy last week. AP-Yonhap

The ruling People Power Party has pledged to press for a revision of the disaster and safety law, a day after President Yoon Suk-yeol called for a crowd management system for private gatherings. Support from the DPK, which holds a majority in the Assembly, is essential.

But it is unclear whether the two parties will cooperate with each other. Following the revelation that the police failed to respond to a series of emergency calls starting four hours before the tragedy occurred, Rep. Lee Jae-myung, the DPK leader, vowed to hold the administration's top officials accountable.

Song Jae-ryong, a sociology professor at Kyung Hee University, said that politicizing the tragedy would deprive the society of the opportunity for a constructive discussion.

"We should use this opportunity to make our society safer and more predictable through a comprehensive discussion about our system" he said. "I believe we may miss the opportunity by focusing too much on certain issues only, such as crowd control, and hastily criticizing our system compared with other nations, which are culturally and legally different … We should ponder, discuss and find a solution that would be suitable for Korean society."