The unicameral parliament of South Korea has approved unanimously passed a law to create a new independent investigative commission into the 2022 Halloween massacre, in which 158 people died. To come into force, the law will have to be signed by President Yoon Suk-yeol, who has already said he is in favor.
The commission will have to investigate the dynamics of the events that led to the massacre and establish those responsible: it will be made up of nine people, and within 15 months it will have to present its findings to the competent government authorities. They will have three months to conduct further investigations into the people identified as responsible by the independent commission.
In January 2023, a first special investigation had attributed responsibility for the massacre to the police and local emergency services, accused of negligence for not having appropriately planned the security measures for the Halloween celebrations. Last January President Yoon he had opposed it at the start of new investigations, but in recent months he has changed his position, also due to the heavy defeat suffered by his party in the April elections.
On the evening of October 29, 2022, around 130 thousand people gathered in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, to celebrate the first Halloween after the end of the restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the event did not have a single organizer, the necessary security measures for large events of this kind had not been put in place and one of the narrow alleys of the neighborhood caused the massacre due to the excessive turnout of people. Hundreds of people were crushed, piled on top of each other: most of them died of asphyxiation.