“I couldn’t do my duty and I’m very sorry”: the policeman who tried to stop the Halloween tragedy in Seoul

Kim Baek-gyeom is still visibly shaken by what he saw on Saturday night in the popular district of Itaewon of seoul.

He is a deputy inspector in the South Korean capital and was on duty that tragic night.

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“We had received a report of an altercation in the area, so I arrived at the scene between 10:10 p.m. and 10:15 p.m.,” he explains to the BBC at his Itaewon police station, a few meters from where the tragedy occurred.

He relates that he saw people lying on the ground and heard screams. “I tried to do my duty, to help people. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do it”it states.

But a video shared on social media showing his desperate efforts to drive people away from the alley has earned him praise from South Koreans, though it highlights the inadequate police presence on the ground that night.

In the video, a young and lonely figure in uniform is seen, with deep concern on his face, trying to stop the immense tide of bodies that moves away from the narrow alley on a slope in which more than 150 people would ultimately lose their lives.

“People are dying!” he yells desperately. “Everyone move this way, please cooperate!”

no planning

Inspector Kim wasn’t even supposed to be there. Although his police station is in the heart of Itaewon, he had not been deployed on the streets that night.

Those streets would end up being filled with more than 100,000 people, mostly young people, who had come to enjoy the Halloween parties.

This narrow alley was packed with people trying to get out in different directions. / BBC / JIRO AKIBA

“I was at the police station, waiting to be sent for any crime that might happen in Itaewon that night,” he recalls. There had been no talk of crowd control, not tonight, not even in the days leading up to Halloween.

“We received the report of the altercation near the alley, so I immediately went to the scene,” he says.

It was then that the inspector saw that there were many people dangerously crowded. People were being crushed at the bottom of the sloping alley that connects a main road to the bar-filled streets on a hill.

To try and prevent more crushing at the bottom, he decided he had to stop people from going into the upper part of the alley.

“As you can see in the video, I started screaming and asking people to go somewhere else.”He says.

Most of the people around him obeyed him and, in fact, many began to help him lead the crowd. Soon dozens of people were performing CPR on the victims, as crowd control efforts quickly turned into a rescue operation.

Kim says that he did not see any other police officers at the scene of the tragedy, although he was later informed that others were also involved in the rescue efforts.

Working alone, without a megaphone or any basic plan of action, he was faced with the impossible task of trying to avert a disaster as it unfolded in front of him.

South Korea’s police chief has acknowledged that the police emergency response was “inadequate”. / GETTY IMAGES

The sheer number of people who lost their lives that night has left him with a great deal of guilt.

“I feel like I didn’t do my best. I didn’t do my duty as a Korean policeman and I’m really sorry,” he says.

On Thursday, the mother of one of the victims contacted the inspector to convey her thanks for his performance that night.

“I was so sorry I couldn’t thank him,” he recalls.

“I couldn’t do my job that night. I would like to meet with the bereaved relatives and express my apologies and talk to them if possible.”

Those families now want answers as anger toward authorities in South Korea grows.

A makeshift memorial for the fatalities outside a subway station in the Itaewon district. / GETTY IMAGES

On Wednesday, special investigators raided eight police stations in Seoul to gather evidence as part of an investigation into how the human avalanche could have occurred.

There is increasing evidence of the failures of the authorities. In the first place, for not having planned properly for Saturday night and, later, for not having responded effectively to the emergency calls that warned of overcrowding and that began to occur hours before the catastrophe.

In the days leading up to the tragedy, the Yongsan-gu district held two meetings to discuss how to handle the Halloween festivities. According to its website, there was talk of covid, garbage collection and illegal parking, among other things.

There was no mention of crowd control, despite the district’s mayor acknowledging the day before that this would be the first Halloween in three years without social distancing measures.

On Tuesday, the South Korean police chief admitted that his body’s emergency response had been “inadequate” and that he felt “great responsibility” for the deaths.

However, Inspector Kim’s efforts have drawn admiration from the general public, although he wants the spotlight to remain on the families of the victims.

“A lot of people have contacted me and asked if I was okay,” he says.

“But instead of worrying about me, think about the grieving families who are going to suffer the most. Please pray for them.”

Map of the area where the tragedy occurred

Source: Elcomercio