SEOUL– The interior minister and the police chief apologized again Monday over the deadly Halloween crowd crush amid criticism of the way the government and police responded to the tragedy, and vowed to devise measures to prevent similar disasters.
Interior Minister and Safety Lee Sang-min told a parliamentary meeting he apologizes for “hurting people’s hearts” with his remarks that the Halloween crowd in Itaewon was not “worryingly large” compared with previous years and the accident would not have been avoidable even if police officers and firefighters had been deployed to the area in advance.
The Oct. 29 crowd surge claimed the lives of at least 156 people, mostly in their 20s.
On the night of the accident, Lee said he did not receive a report from police on the disaster. Even though his ministry oversees police through a bureau set up earlier this year, Lee said the minister has no authority yet to give orders to the police chief.
Calls have been mounting for Lee to step down, but he said he has not expressed a desire to quit.
“For now, I will put my best efforts to do what I can do,” he said when asked if he’s willing to resign.
Yoon Hee-keun, commissioner-general of the National Police Agency, said he feels responsible for failing to foresee the situation and being outside of Seoul at the time of the accident.
Yoon was found to have been sleeping at a camping site in Jecheon, about 120 kilometers southeast of Seoul, at the time and learned of the accident about two hours after it happened.
“Nobody, including the police, saw this coming. If we had done so, we would have deployed not only police squads but more forces,” Yoon said, noting 137 police officers were dispatched to Itaewon for Halloween, a number which is not smaller compared with previous years.
Police and the interior ministry, which oversees the police, have come under fire following revelations that the police snubbed a series of emergency calls about overcrowding in Itaewon that day.
The National Assembly plans to summon Lee Im-jae, former chief of Yongsan Police Station that polices Itaewon area, and two other key police officials in the case for inquiry at a meeting of a parliamentary committee on the interior and safety next week.
Source: Yonhap News Agency