As the names of those killed in Saturday’s crowd crush in Itaewon trickle out and residents pay their respects at mourning altars dedicated to the victims, South Korea’s collective trauma is only just beginning.
SEOUL — The soaring death tolls. Social media images and videos of the chaos and suffering. Endless news coverage. Thousands of witnesses and emergency personnel, and countless more people who have heard their accounts and grieved with them. South Korean residents are reeling from the horror that unfolded Saturday night, which killed at least 154 and injured 149 more.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has declared a national mourning period in remembrance of the victims. Businesses near the site where the crowd crush occurred have shut down for the week, after the surrounding area was declared a disaster zone. “As people consume information about what happened that night, their own hearts may race wondering how those people felt that night, what they heard, what they were thinking,” Joo said. “As people experience the empathy and fear on behalf of those victims, even if they weren’t there on-site, the exposure to that night’s events can affect them in a traumatic way.
In a tent next to the altar outside Seoul City Hall, counselors were ready to speak with mourners. Two plastic folding tables, with a small folding shutter to shield the grieving people from view, stood just feet from the entrance to the altar, where gloved workers were handing out flowers. Another woman sprinted out of the center and into a car. She paused before getting in, facing reporters with tears in her eyes, but was unable to utter any words. At the center, her colleague, an official with the presidential office, explained that she was an employee of the presidential office who had worked overnight helping families search for loved ones. While working, she had learned that a family member was one of the missing.
“People were laid across here all the way down, about a half-mile,” he said, gesturing toward Itaewon’s main drag. “There were so many bodies on the floor.”
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