Although the National Week of Mourning for the Itaewon Tragedy has ended, there is still a sense of remembrance, sadness, and heartbreak. In a space of everyday life that is not the sky or the open sea, in the familiar hustle and bustle where buildings or bridges have not collapsed, the fact that a tremendous tragedy has happened in an instant does not stop the despair. How unrealistic is the reality that ordinary life-affirming energies, not familiar villains, have turned an ordinary alley that you would encounter anywhere around the corner into a disaster scene that is painful to even look at?

It is not easy to draw a picture of how truth-finding will be done. Of course, if you just do what you're used to, there won't be any difficulty. The police investigation is already in full swing, a government investigation is being discussed, and a special prosecutor will be possible if necessary. It is a problem that the statement “there was no organizer and no one was grossly negligent” came out of the mouth of a government official as an excuse, but it will be an objective condition that cannot be easily overlooked in the process of finding out the truth.

If we look at all the situations calmly, it is highly likely that the truth-finding will result in the authorities' complacent response. Measures to prevent recurrence will be filled with “special measures” at the level of pedestrian environment improvement and crowd management. However, the problem is when unintended disasters whose cause and negligence cannot be specified appear in everyday space with a different face. Is it possible to control the new public, which is an individual and forms a crowd in the blink of an eye, with 20th-century management techniques, armed with high-tech devices, exchanging information through social media, moving and gathering without hesitation? This is why the remarks of an opposition lawmaker, “I should have shot at least a blank bullet,” sound terrifying.

Despite the macroscopic risk of division and confrontation, Korea has built a country with strong security and is recognized worldwide to the extent of being proud of it. An authoritarian state provides security services, and citizens have built up the belief that they will be safe if they do as they are told in the environment provided by the state. In this process, the subject of citizenship became an object. CCTVs coiled in every alley and enforcement cameras all over the road reduce the subject of citizenship to an “object of care,” along with a sense of security that they are being protected. It is a self-evident proposition that the state is responsible for the safety of its people, but it is a different matter to lose the ability to respond without public authority when faced with an unexpected situation.

The Itaewon disaster painfully confirmed how a crisis response system that relies solely on public power can be incapacitated. What if that night, based on access data collected by the telecommunications company, an overcrowding warning message was sent to the users in the area so that they could respond in advance? By installing sound wave communication infrastructure that can be used by private companies throughout the city, it is possible to prevent large and small accidents by sending out local information in normal times and alerts in crisis situations. The starting point of the disaster prevention process should be the creation of conditions in which individuals who have acquired essential information in a timely manner can respond quickly even before public authorities arrive.