Kim Kwang-ho, police chief of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, was indicted on charges of professional negligence for the insufficient response of the police after the massacre on October 29, 2022. That evening during the Halloween celebrations 158 people died in the crush, trapped in an alley just over 3 meters wide near the Itaewon neighborhood in the center of the city.
The Halloween massacre had a very strong impact on public opinion, also due to what emerged in the subsequent investigations, which revealed some political responsibilities, linked to the failure to adopt security measures, promptness in responding to emergency calls and ‘illegal buildingwhich had made the alley narrower than permitted.
It is estimated that on October 29, 2022 in Itaewon there were around 130 thousand people who spontaneously gathered in the most famous nightlife district of Seoul to celebrate the first Halloween after the end of the pandemic restrictions. Since the event did not have a single organizer, the necessary safety measures for large events of this kind had not been put in place and, in one of the narrow alleys of the neighborhood, the excessive turnout of people caused the disaster. Hundreds of people were crushed, piled on top of each other: most of them died of asphyxiation.
That evening Kim Kwang-ho was off duty, and before the massacre he had deployed 137 police officers in the Itaewon neighborhood, a number that the prosecutor’s office deemed clearly insufficient to manage the enormous crowd that was celebrating Halloween.