On October 29th, 2022, two days before Halloween, a tragic stampede in Itaewon, South Korea, traumatized the whole nation by a death toll of 156 instead of trick or treat and lighthearted entertainment. While a similar occurrence has happened before in South Korea in terms of huge casualties, none of them but the Itaewon Stampede has officially been reported as a case of a stampede. In response to this tragedy, Yoon Seok-Yeol, the president of South Korea and a member of the People Power Party (PPP), repeatedly expressed his deep condolences for the loss of young lives in Itaewon. He continuously visited the resting place of the victims with a funeral speech on each of his visits. Despite the president’s condolences, disputes ensue about the government’s responsibility, and the opposition party, the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is furiously arguing that the ruling party, PPP, has failed to prevent and deal with the stampede.

A day after the stampede, October 30th, the Yoon government initiated a national condolence week for 7 days and also released explicit records of the presidential conference with the head of Central Disaster and Safety (CDS). Brief news was released after the conference with a controversial comment from the head of CDS: “There was never an excessive number of people at the moment.” This immediately ignited a new discussion emerging from citizens of whether the government truly understood the full depth and seriousness of the stampede. The official address from the DPK cited the quote with a condemning tone that the Yoon government does not quite understand the full depth of the stampede but has spent excessive time researching and examining the causation of the stampede. Eventually, at the end of the five days of national condolence week, the DPK and the citizens went skeptical about the government’s reliability.
Moreover, as the media broadcast and investigation were released, it has been found in numerous cases that the government official addressed the Itaewon stampede as an “incident,” not a “tragedy”. Though “incident” is a common word applied to such events with massive casualties, it was rather peculiar to encounter the governmental response using a neutral word, “incident.”
The Head Minister of Interior replied to a question related to this by explaining the diction as “neutral as possible for preparing any other cases.” The last phrase, “any other cases” outraged the nation and as political analysts even more and led to cold criticism of the government’s response. One unequivocal statement is that the government's responses to the stampede were more aloof and lukewarm than they were expected to be from the citizens, in terms of this national tragedy. It went quite evident that the citizens do not trust the government anymore, as a recent survey of 1073 citizens held by Newstomato resulted in 73.1% of the participants strongly agreeing that the government holds the most responsibility in the Itaewon stampede. Especially Daegu and Busan regions - two historically renowned regions for their adamant support for the opposition party, PPP - turned their back to the Yoon ministry as the “strong responsibility for the government” response topped with Daegu at 51.3% and Busan/Kyeongbuk region at 53.4%.
Meanwhile, opposition emerged claiming that the arguments against the Yoon government are overly exaggerated and eventually vilified the ministry as a whole with misconception. Revising the statement made by the Head Minister of Interior, Lee Sang Min, in which he mentioned that “incident” is a neutral term, the claim itself is appropriate. Many other foreign media as well as major domestic media referred to the Itaewon stampede as an incident as well. Furthermore, more can be argued that the word incident is appropriate for current situations where the impact of tragedy or the full investigation has yet to be thoroughly completed.

Later reports and investigations acknowledged that the Halloween festival held in Itaewon had no specific coordinator or a host who could have managed the whole situation. But instead, there was a general unconscious belief among the victims that there would be no safety risk with a serious cause of injury. This is called “apathy of safety”, which has long been established as a societal problem in contemporary South Korea, an illogical faith or belief that there are no feasible crises possible. Contrasting with adjacent countries, this safety unconsciousness in South Korea stands out in East Asia as South Koreans regard safety issues such as fire safety and tsunami alert as infinitesimal and insignificant.

In conclusion, what the Itaewon Stampede has taught us is not merely an issue of how the Yoon government is malfunctioning but to understand and develop our nation with a sustainable, conscious mindset on dealing with safety issues. Even now, a political debate regarding the Itaewon Stampede leads into a deep rabbit hole of a political “blame game” between the ruling party and the opposition party. What must be addressed is not whom to blame or ask responsibility to, but to ask what the problem was with an attentive mind and to scrutinize every safety measure in the country to prevent any occurrence that will draw a similarity with the Itaewon Stampede.