I mean, not only the government/ police, the people also should understand when so many people where there. Where is their responsibility? It was doomed from the start.
@@PureWhiteWolf honestly!!! Like who goes, “hmmm this is super crowded, I’ll just join in this narrow space, surely nothing bad will happen!” Common sense can save lives, ppl…
@@autumnlove96able That is true, but as i see it. We live as sheeps, as long their is many people, more will come. We have rejected common sense a long time a go, it's very sad those who died and it's sad for their family and friends. But if they did have some common sense. Then those people would still be alive. What i fear the most, is that this will be forgotten and it will happen again.
It is not a holidays fault but an human error . A lot of things went horribly wrong all at once but you can't say that it couldn't have happend during any other big event or holiday . So no . I don't think Japan should ban Halloween. Instead , new rules and preventive measures should be put in place , so such tragedy never happens again .
This is how I feel. Surely there’s a reasonable middle ground between completely banning something and allowing it to get so out of hand it makes Philadelphia Eagles fans feel uncomfortable with the amount of chaos
Rules put in place might have contributed to that happening. Apparently south korea have some rule that limits the number of people allowed in each bar in relation to area, which causes long queues and massification outside. While inside is not even crowded. The natural order when bars are full is entering seeing it sucks and leaving the fuck out. Well that was replaced by everyone waiting to enter locals that did not let anyone in with no progression lmao
A big thing to keep in mind too is that a lot of these folks working front of house, security, event planning, etc have likely been out of work for some time. Or, they’re brand new at doing this. Not sure about Seoul and Tokyo, but a lot of friends where I live (NYC) just left as they were suddenly out of work. Unless you’re affiliated with a big label or promoter like Insomniac or Boiler Room or something, nightclubs and venues run on tight margins.
Japan had this literally on daily basis, that's called rush hour. The main difference is the people tried their best not to push each other, and also the crowd control group being actually competent. It is bad, but not something new or unexpected.
That is how we are in the West because our population density even in big cities doesn't tend to be as extreme as in some Asian countries. People there had to overcome that natural instinct to avoid densely packed crowds to survive aspects of city life, which leaves them more vulnerable in situations like this where there is no crowd control present and the streets and alleyways are so narrow. I think the solution would be to bar off the narrow areas during busy times like holidays or events, and only let a certain number of people in as though it were a carnival or something. That way they can prevent the crowds there from getting too dense. All attendees should be reminded to be patient and not push or move too close together. Tell everyone to keep an arm's length apart when on the move and not to block the walkways. Have some security scattered about to intervene if they see a dangerous crowd building up in one spot.
@KanashiiFX They LITERALLY had to be crushed every time they board a train in rush hour. The station attendant literally football tackled them into the cabin. The difference is of course, staying in order...
I've never been to Japan for Halloween, but Itaewon is a place with small streets and steep hills, it was a neighborhood mostly occupied by foreigners and outsiders back in the day, so it was not meant to have crowds of thousands of people like it does during Halloween. I would argue the police should've known crowds would be even worse than years before (and it HAS been bad years before COVID. Halloween weekend in Itaewon gets crazy, with hundreds of people riding the trains in full costumes and whatnot) but I agree that it was just an unfortunate event.
Banning Halloween because of this would be as stupid as the British banning Football because they had things like this happen in their stadiums. Take the time to figure out the what and the why things went wrong and FIX it.
@@purpleplanet888 Yeah, people seem to be ignoring this part totally. No official source in Japan is asking, "Should we *BAN* Halloween?", just attempting to avoid issues after a tragedy surrounding it the day prior and several issues that have popped up in previous Halloween celebrations (which are hardly any different than any other countries various celebration holidays). All he could do was say "Some old people question if it should be allowed"...yeah, no shit Joey, there are old people in every country in the world who don't understand the youth of several generations after them just like their great grandparents didn't understand them. *tl'dr -* Ever since he started covering Japanese news with increasing frequency the titles have just ramped up to insane levels of clickbait and no fan wants to admit it.
@@Goldenkitten1 I admit he has been posting some topics I personally do not like on this channel. But I still enjoy the other contents joey make, especially the podcast and his collabs with Chris.
@@Goldenkitten1 I don't see what's wrong with the title. It's just a question to prompt discussion, not a statement. I didn't go into this with a false impression that Japan has set it's sights on banning Halloween. I went into it expecting a discussion about the Halloween culture in Japan and whether there are proper safety measures to prevent accidents from happening since Japan has had its fair share of Halloween-related incidents.
Pretty sure that stuff happens every year.... Not only at Halloween. I think it was just unfortunate that they got caught up in the middle of the crowds. But I do agree that proper measures should've been taken to prevent this from happening.
I had seen a video of one cop struggling to direct people on Reddit, just the one policeman. There should have been many more helping keep people spread out or moving.
@@sneedmando186 Itaewon normally is always full it's a party/tourist area. and maybe they had something else to do. The people also hold responsibility for their actions. Because I saw people going left and right. Everyone thought about themselves. Which lead to the disaster.
Crowd crushes and human stampedes do happen relatively often. In fact the very next day there was another incident where 135 people died in India. It can happen at any time when there are more people than a location can comfortably hold.
There’s an article where some police call transcripts were revealed and multiple people called worried about other’s safety in an alleyway and the police kept saying that they’ll look into it and will send some police officers to where the reports were at and I personally think they just said it without doing anything since multiple people died that night in the alleyway and I think as long as the Japanese police officers listen to peoples reports it will be okay
I was at Shibuya Halloween this year and also in 2018. This year there were police officers stationed every few meters on stands above the crowd directing traffic and people with speakers, also directing the flow of walking right from the station. They were working their butts off and it felt so much safer and calmer compared to 2018. They definitely took notes and improved on controlling it in a safe way, so i dont think they have any need to ban it since they showed how well they could control it this year.
I've been to itewon on non-holiday day and still felt claustrophobic... Maybe i am personally too used to cities with less population density. But it is clearly the authorities fault for not doing the crowd management. I have witnessed crowd management in dubai during new year celebrations - they had police officers fishing out people with small children and guiding them to metro station and volunteers handing out water bottles. In general being in that crowd was horrible but the crowd was handled good
I watched a few livestreams of shibuya during Halloween and I did see police at certain points controlling the flow of people, they even sectioned off the famous crosswalk area so it seems like they're remaining vigilant, whether that's because of what happened in Seoul im not sure but regardless its good to see some action being taken
That's because shibuya officers actually gotten know this especially with hundreds of complaints about some weirdos harassing women in shibuya in halloween that they take action to it
@@cyrilmarasigan7108that might be part of the reason, but in my 7 years of living in Japan, there’s always police controlling human traffic in any big events, including festivals, concerts, halloween, and even during the World cup celebration just last week and even a few days ago, even tho it was early in the morning...
I've watched a bunch of Korean channels talk about this when it first happened, and it was just a question of *when* not *if,* because unfortunately much of human nature is cure rather than prevention. 😞 There were already party goers that were in Itaewon the night before the tragedy, and they were partying hard into the morning of the tragedy, and the crowds were already intense. Authorities should've known and been more prepared for it but they simply failed to do so. The first street party in Itaewon in 3 years with no mask requirements was always going to be massive, and many have mentioned that it was basically inevitable. The street in question slopes rather steeply downwards, and there are 3 streets that also bottleneck into the one juncture which makes crowd control even more necessary. I don't believe Halloween should be banned - the event/celebration is not the issue - but strict safety measures need to be enforced beforehand. The national period of mourning in SK also goes until November 5th.
I live in korea and had friends in Itaewon, luckily none were hurt There were official transcripts released where people were calling police up to 4 hours before the incident and police not reacting properly or at all until the actual crush began. Officials have since apologized for this. It's horrible tragedy that may have been prevented but thats hindsight. Holidays like this aren't the issue Itaewon gets regularly busy like that and it's honestly surprising it didn't happen before.
this could have happened due to any sort of crowd, whether it be a holiday or a sports game. this easily could have been due to another holiday. (I assume there are others that bring people outside like Halloween does)
This reminds me a lot of what happened at a football stadium here in England, it’s just another tragedy that in hindsight could have been avoided. All they can do now is make more rules and regulations to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I feel really bad for the families of the victims though
I lived in Osaka and goes to both this year and last year's Halloween, I think it is quite dense with people and crowds but the road/place in this case Doutonbori, Shinsaibashi theres still alot of spaces and not to mention theres police watching over managing the crowds, so I don't think it should be ban since Japan has a good place and management...
This tragedy has really affected me personally, because something similar happened in my hometown outside a disco, and somebody from my secondary school actually died, so this did bring up some painful memories and I give love to all the families of the victims❤🕊
Everything the most popular comments said + they did say the police officers in Korea didn't react fast enough. And from what I've seen of halloween on Kaho's stream in Shibuya police was literally everywhere. Japan is doing just fine when it comes to safety.
Honest opinion: This isnt enough to call for a ban on celebrating a holiday but should instead be used as a precedent to increase monitoring and security instead, until there is a much more significant enough call for it. If celebration of Halloween were to be banned over what happened this time, you'd have to risk banning other holidays on grounds of accidents caused by unrelated events with things that can be used to celebrate the holiday with an example being fireworks disasters, either from improper storing of it which could lead to a devastating explosion that would level the storage building and surrounding buildings (Seest fireworks disaster more than a decade ago in Denmark as an example), or firework displays with highly premature accidental ignitions of fireworks closer to the ground where people are.
Crowds can be in any festival, celebration, protest etc Banning one festival won't make a difference . If its known and estimated that at a particular day there is going to be huge crowd gathering Take better precautions to mobilize it so that everyone is safe. Banning or saying "don't go to crowded places" isn't the solution
That was the fault of the S. Korean government. They knew they would have a crowd, they knew people wanted to hang out again after covid prevention was lifted, and they even had people calling since that afternoon, but they never took it seriously until too late. It was an excuse to say that there were no organizers like a BTS concert.
i live in korea and i think the best thing any country can do is just learn from sk’s government’s mistakes. they had emergency calls coming in for hours asking for police intervention and it still happened. they should have closed off the main streets and in the past for festivals in itaewon they used small alleys like that for one way walk ways. i think halloween here is going to be a little different forever, but i hope a time comes when we can enjoy halloween here again someday. i would hate for other countries to go through that as well. (btw pronunciation is like ee-tae-one so you were close!)
Something around that Seoul story just seems shady. I mean i understand that people gathered together in a massive crowd, but how the feth did they get crushed by one another? I don't know if those people were really frail, but 150+ people going into cardiac arrest for being crushed by, well, other people, doesn't seem plausible. I've been dwelling in moshpits and i have had a fair share of beatdowns back in my day and i must say that a human body can stand a lot of pressure and damage before collapsing. That whole story is borderline fishy. That said, "banning" things is never the answer to anything, they should have planning to prevent what happened there and still have a couple of paramedics just in case. The best take here is prevention.
Yo Joey, I live in Korea, I've been to the street where the tragedy happened. The Iteawon area is often over crowded, and it's a popular place for expats. I think the bigger issue is that there were calls to the police 4 hours before the tradgedy happened with concerns with over crowding. The local police have apologised and admitted fault. There are rumours the crowd surge started with a 'celebraty' siting which have been largly ignored too. Honestly it's a messy situation and having to check your friends aren't dead is a horrible position to be in, Halloween is most definetly cancelled this year >
There were MULTIPLE phone calls to the police earlier that day asking them to come and control the traffic down that alley out of fear of an accident. Unfortunately they ignored them. Last year during Halloween, the police would come and break up large groups of people like this for covid and literally just ride around with sirens and ask people to leave an area if it got too poplar (especially in places like Hongdae and Itaewon which are meant for nightlife). It’s a shame that they decided it wasn’t worth the effort this time due to relaxed covid laws. I think that’s why it’s so frustrating, because it was preventable.
There's a yearly medieval fair here in Portugal that takes place in an entire village. It's so popular that the police needs to siege the place and limit how many people get into it, because being an old village with tight walled streets, the exact same thing would happen here... So Seul needed more crowd control like that, and after this tragedy I'm sure it will.
This happened in Spain a few years ago, because a massive halloween party was way over capacity with bad emergency exit planning. After that, emergency planning and capacity laws became way more strict. It's sad but many times it takes tragedies like this to make the government do something about it.
A little tie bit They are pushing the police phone operators out as scapegoat because people were calling about the overcrowding of this area over an hour before people started dying Apparently the operators didn’t care or thought it wasn’t worth it so they didn’t send help
The very worst case is that they could probably ban mass volume crowds, but I don't see that happening. What made Seoul's incident deadly is the fact that it happened on a tight downward-sloping alley that is unregulated by not just the authority, but the the people within that crowd as well. Honestly if this type of crowd were to emerge in a flat level area, things would be nowhere near as bad or even non-existent compared to what happened in Seoul. Hell, many Japanese people are familiar with this setting during rush hours when they cram into sardine-packed subways. People just need to be aware and responsible.
158 people now. Also the chief cop committed suicide because there where 119/ police calls 2 hours before the crush happened and the police didn’t take it seriously.
This is more human error than the holiday itself. Also, the areas are very different from each other. I've been around the Shibuya Crossing area, and from my opinion, even if there are even 100K people in the area, there are smaller intersecting streets that people can move to to avoid the crowd. Also, the streets are flat and well lit. The main hazard of Itaewon is that there are no organizers, the street itself is narrow with no way else to go but where the crowd is and is on an uphill road. It's sad that this happened in the first place.
I've been going every year since 2015 and this was the first year I didn't attend. The ban on alcohol isn't new, it was in place for the last 3 years at least. Anti-masking protests have been taking place outside Shibuya station every year since the pandemic, lol. Worst thing I saw was a van trying to drive through a dense crowd in 2018. Guys started kicking the van, which only made the driver panic. Ended up seeing people caught between the van and a street railing and some dude dropped his box with a snake in it (??). Don't think anyone was hurt but it could have been much worse. Thing have been much more tame recently.
It's crazy how people think Halloween is an American thing lol, it's a Celtic, pagan festival. It has nothing to do with America. It is from Irish, Scottish and Welsh origin primarily. I lived in Australia and everyone thought Halloween was an American holiday :/
Used to go to a vocational school just around the corner from Shibuya crossing (pre pandemic). Remember being at school during the halloween and when I went outside the school I think it was around 10 police vans parked on the street in preparation for the evening.
I've been in some wild and crowded mosh pits in my day. About a decade ago at Warped Tour, I saw Enter Shikari, and I had an almost traumatic experience where I was nearly crushed and experienced true claustrophobia for the first time. Because I'm over 6 foot, people were squeezing me at my sides. It was so tight that I felt like I either had to climb UP, or duck DOWN underneath everyone elses torsos, where the pressure was. I even was picked up off the ground, and it felt like being in an ocean with massive waves that just toss you around, but also crushing your chest, etc... JUST THE THOUGHT of people going through this in a worse way, where people actually died... it's just unimaginably terrifying to me, and very few things really scare or terrify me.
According to people who were in the crushing and some reporters, this year in itaewon were little to none officers unlike the years before; there where no organizations taking care of the Halloween party, so it was responsibility of the local government of yeongsan; they didn't had officers available due to the actual president using the whole capacity of the yeongsan province police, because he didn't move to the blue house due to his chamán telling him the blue house had bad "Feng shui"; yeongsan police was complaining about not having staff available, taking blame for not being able to answer the 10+ calls they received from hours before the crushing; the people there were stupid for entering the alley when it was full, yet other years with the same amount of people nothing happened, giving them a fake sense of security; if there's someone to blame is the presidents and the local government for saying they didn't expected so much people even if it was the first Halloween party in years, it was obvious a lot of people were going, they should had make a plan. A lot of people saved themselves by leaving itaewon before or having crossed the intersection minutes before the crushing. The hashtags are Itaewon and 이태원 if you want to block them, the images are still graphic 😞 everything is so sad and that they could have avoid it makes it sadder
I was there (luckily wasn’t in the crush) and can confirm VERY few police (not sure I even saw one) were there. I heard at work they were with the president and saw videos of the same event in 2017 which was full of police and had 2x the attendees.
I am glad to see someone thinks as me in one aspect. As you said, "people there were stupid for entering the alley when it was full". I know they were expecting this night so much, but did no one stop to think at a certain point that the street was already crowded and left somewhere else? Is that the only street in the whole city to celebrate Halloween? And I go even further, MUST Halloween be celebrated at the risk (certainty I would say) of a disaster like that? I don't know, if you see it is too dangerous, just either go somewhere else or don't celebrate it. I simply don't get how things like that get to happen. If Korean people are so psychologically stressed that they are willing to take these risks, let me tell you one thing: they are really fucked up. Lastly, my condolences to all who were involved and to the 151 affected families.
@@haganeelric98 with the social pressure they have to leave their lives at school, college and the work it's no surprise really, one girl on insta who told her story and why she left Korea told how, when having problems, her boss told her to just begin drinking like the rest of them, it's awful to read and it's common 😞 And, also, the work comes first thing, there's one girl that's been for years in Mexico(a) now and recently she had to take her sister (b) with her, since the vacation the sister (b) took to see her (a), (the girl (a) can't go back to Korea or her burn out turns on and ends up on the hospital since day one) (b) she was force by her work to work until the morning not going home and to stay at work on the weekends because they were blaming her for taking a vacation when the others were working, she got so burnt her husband sent her to her sister (a) her story it's awful, and it's so normal the suicide rates are enough for Korea to be despairing 😞 Those are the stories I remember that prove why a lot don't care about their own security and only wanted to get drunk 😞
Thank you for the info on why this happened this year. I think the president should have his own security detail that travels with him wherever he goes instead of taking up so much police personnel. It makes no sense to subject an entire city to a police shortage for the safety of only one man. So selfish.
@@arlicelovely1689 That's so horrible. It sounds like Korea needs stricter worker's rights regulations to stop employers from abusing them like that. That is insane.
im worried about how that would affect manga and anime, so it should stay but people should slow down and be in less of a hurry when theres people around on a event when someone is knocked over it means a busy people needs to instantly be noted maybe putting on like a i dont know a beeping sound buzzer on the front of a shirt during holiday events so someone could be heard when they fall over like a fall over beep buzzer so people know to stop and lift someone up off the floor and ask if they need an ambulance.
Joey, there's an important thing to note here - What happened in Korea was due to negligence of the government and forces. It's a lot to dive into, but worth reading up on. It wasn't any difference in terms of quantity of people compared to pre-pandemic years, in fact this year even less people attended than say, 2019. The head of the police received a call about the crush TWO HOURS after it had already happened, and people started calling the police about the danger of the situation few hours prior, but nothing was done. And if we dive even deeper, their current president requested hundreds of policemen to monitor him that day because instead of living at the Blue House like their president should (the Blue House is practically the White House of South Korea), his 'shaman' that he takes everywhere told him there's bad feng shui in the house, and so he decided to reside someplace else that's in the Itaewon area. Because of that, over 800 police officers were assigned to guard him around the clock and also guard a (MUCH smaller in quantity) protest that was happening outside his house, instead of being at Itaewon and looking after the 100k celebrators. So instead of 800-900 officers guarding Itaewon, you had 200 who had no clue how to control the situation after it escalated. So if you ask me, there's definitely someone to blame here, and that's the incompetence of the system. It was 100% preventable.
Japan has a better system when it comes to large celebrations . I’ve been to and have many friends in Japan. Every time I’ve been to and have seen some large gathering, Halloween or new year, there is always precautions and police present. I’ve never seen it get like that (s.k). And I might get a lot of angry comments but what happened in Korea was extremely stupid, I was almost amazed by the shear human stupidity *lack of preparation and control.
Honestly, by the way you describe this year's Halloween in Japan, I think they handled it pretty well already; no need to ban anymore if they keep this up. Korea though... it's awful. That tragedy shouldn't have happened if 1) people had the common sense not to keep cramming themselves into tight places and big crowds, and 2) if the district's authorities actually paid attention to how it gets crowded there for Halloween every year, then they should've at least put some precaution to maintain safety and order. Additionally, I wish Crowd Crush (and maybe even Stampede) precautions would be included in disaster safety training, in addition to response to natural disasters. They should be teaching these things in school, imo.
Actually squeezes are completely predictable. When organizing an event there IS someone that is supposed to do logistics and insert measures that discourage people from packing wall to wall like sardines so that a squeeze doesn't happen; traffic cones or stanchions to leave open space, the strategic placement of anticipated high traffic areas, etc. And lastly, security to make sure people don't pour into these cordoned-off areas. This would have made it so that less people would be able to get in, but it also would have made it so that when the fall occurred that the crowd could properly disperse with this extra space. I imagine it being a public event made it so that nobody felt responsible for that role, and that led to something as tragic as this.
The a Korea thing... and how is this related to Japan??? I mean who in the right mind would be so packed up in a ramp... Oh, right a debt ridden country that has no space, no safty first... Just look at that ship seowl or the every 10 years economic crisis. Dont compare Japan to the soon to be homeless country.
Well when people that live their lives opressed by so much social rules, when they are enabled to just be themselves, it is clear as day that they would do these kind of stuff
I really do not mean to come across as that ignorant American when saying this, I’m just speaking from personal experience here. I feel terrible for all those people. This is why you can’t completely trust local authority, not because of some misguided paranoia or conspiracy. But just for the simple fact of reality. Yes they are trusted and responsible for keeping the city safe, but it does not “guarantee” it. You absolutely have to be aware of your surroundings, do not just go with the flow and do what everybody else does. And even though probably not common in that part of the world, with things going on that are just increasingly disturbing, you can’t afford to not be cautious. You have to be alert, have an exit. And even then there’s only so much you can do, I remembered hearing about the whole Travis Scott concert debacle, and how painful and difficult that was for some people. It was a situation where people rushed past security and the ticket gates, also leading to a crowd crush. And it’s not really any of those concert goers fault, especially ones that were just already there and had paid for their tickets. Obviously the situation is different, and I don’t think there’s really anyone at fault, and by that I mean it didn’t seem to be a situation that was out of malice or intent to hurt people, if anything it seems to be more of an issue of preparation or failure to act.
No one to blame? The Yoon administration is to blame in my opinion. 1) He decided to move his office into the Yongsan District (Itaewon area) simply because his corrupt shaman didn't like the feng shui of the blue house. Due to this he uses 700 police officers DAILY just to escort him to the office. It's also because of him that the street was not blocked off for pedestrians on halloween. 2) 6000 police officers were sent to a small protest against the Yoon administration 10 mins away instead of focusing on the well known crowded Halloween event in itaewon. 3) Only 137 officers (58 in offical uniform) were sent to Itaewon with a focus on cracking down on minor drug related offenses NOT crowd control. 4) The polic officers had calls coming in about the dangerous crowds as early as 6:30pm. People were even physically walking over to an office which is a stones throw away from alley to warn them people where going to die. The officers did not react in time. In past years they have sent out hundreds of officers to manage the crowds in itaewon and there have been no casualties. This isn't the fault of the holiday or any of the young people who went there to have fun. They should have been safe.
Ultimately the crush in SK is a failure of public safety/event safety. Which is tough, because heading off the disaster probably needed to start hours before it happened. You can't control a sea of people, you can only stop it from forming. But your efforts will be made fun of if you send 100 safety officers to watch a crowd of 50 party goers. Maybe even called wasteful, so you get fewer resources for the next event.
I grew up on Sydney's Northern Beaches in Australia. Halloween used to be exciting because no one in my neighbourhood celebrated it. The majority of the houses didn't have candy, so they gave me money, and I usually made a couple hundred dollars.
my parents are kenyan and asian, and we live in the states so they've always been so weary of me going out on big nights SPECIFICALLY halloween and it always seemed so overprotective and annoying. but after what seeing what happened in Seoul I completely understood
Lol, that's completely ridiculous. Halloween in America is mostly a holiday for little kids. It is true that people in their teens and 20s will go to house parties with their friends, but it's literally mostly a holiday for little kids. It also mostly doesn't involve people bunching up but rather going house to house and getting free candy. Your parents are definitely being ridiculous.
@@takanara7 no yeah i get what you mean and i mostly feel that way too, but I think I just mean I understand the caution a bit more now as I got older and due to recent events
I was in Shibuya at Halloween in 2018 and it was unbelievably packed. Just like this one except the area is not slopped. Scary and exciting at the same time.
America handled this much better instead of having 1 town host hallloween, they have the giant sports stadiums host the events with capacities of 15,000 to 100,000 for the adult/college students while kids would be taken to local neighborhoods going door to door for candy. Also Marijuana is still illegal in USA, there are only 19 states that have legalized it.
Thanks for covering this Joey. It was an extremely unfortunate and sad event that could have been prevented. I was there that night around the time the crush began. Luckily I was at the bottom of the slope and was able to work my way out of the crush and escape to another part of the area. The main criticism from many here was the absence of police for crowd control. I remember seeing only a few police at the scene and it has been said roughly 100 officers were sent to the area but only a few of those cops were given instructions for crowd control. I saw roughly 3~4 cops in the crowd when I was there and two of them were carrying a woman that had passed out. This year the Halloween crowd is estimated to be about 130k people. In 2019, the crowd was smaller I believe but there was significantly more police presence. In 2017 in Itaewon the crowd was actually bigger, with 200k being in Itaewon and there were no deaths as the police presence and the effectiveness of crowd control measures. There were calls from Itaewon this year starting at 6pm, a full 4 hours from the crush, and cops ignored the complaints of it being hard to move during that time. Police also called their superiors and told them the crowd was getting hard for them to control and still the superiors did not send backup. This event was an unfortunate set of circumstances but it was totally preventable and is completely on the superiors of the police who ignored warnings hours ahead and by officials not preparing properly like how it was years before. There is also the case the recently the president of South Korea moved the presidents working office to the same area in Yongsan, which is the same district Itaewon is in, also stressed the districts police force thin. The Yongsan police now has the responsibility to provide security for the president and police the area. There was also a protest against the current Korean president on the same day as the Halloween celebrations which was being covered by thousands of police officers. So again, this incident has many factors but the primary factor was a lack of preparation by the police and governmental officials.
Halloween was a shitshow this year. I was coming back to London from a trip home and arrived to my station being evacuated because teenagers were firing fireworks at people. The loud evacuation notices, 100s of police, helicopter, fireworks etc. was no fun as I try and move along with my suitcase tryna figure out how tf I get home. And then I came home to the news of South Korea.
Methods that I know are from New York and what NYC does in Times Square for New Years Eve is to let people in to one area until it is full, then shut it off with barricades except to residents, who are sent cards to prove their residence ahead of time. Then people go to the area on the next street until that gets cut off. And so on and so forth. Then no more are allowed into the area after a certain hour. Another method to use is to have another large public event held. That divides up the crowd. Yet another method of crowd division is the Rockafeller Center Christmas current method is to have celebrity performances in several different locations around the city.
I've watched a few seconds of the footage taken by people in the situation itself on Twitter, and those few seconds still haunts me as it is burnt into my memory. It is disturbing and horrible and if you're somebody who cannot handle things like that, I advise you to not look for it
I know it was horrible everything that happened that day, but korea has noting to do with japan. If they couldn't help or maintain order on itaewon, it doesn't mean that would happem in every part of the world or stop doing that
"No one to blame" ~There's always someone to blame... in this case they should've had officers(people responsible for the officers) and had they counting how many people were there and allow only a certain ammount... this is like, normal thing to do when it's known that a place will be crowded even if it's public.
As someone who doesn't drink, smoke, or partake in drugs. I only ever saw Halloween as a time for kids to have fun and get candy. When i heard about the street party i honestly had no clue how i would handle it because i don't take part in drinking and such. If people can find a way to have fun without those im all for it.👍 I still don't know what i would do there.🤣
Regulate and monitor. Dont allow an insane amount of rowdy young adults in a confined space. If they want to party it up, go inside somewhere spread out. It would be like americans partying in the streets, except there’d be millions of people injured and murdered lol. Sad what happened to SK. And I am glad it didnt happen in Japan. I was worried it may.
The stuff I've seen is that the crush was very preventable. There were multiple times before the crush happened that ppl there called the police about the crowd getting too dangerous and the police just didn't do anything. Supposedly there is even a police station close by. It's not Halloween that needs to get banned unless you're banning all street fests, you just need crowd planning from the city gov and police. And the authorities definitely deserve blame and responsibility. There are other street fests and events that attract similar crowds.
Apparently there was a rumor that "unnamed" idol showed up at the halloween festivities and it went downhill from there. But it's a rumor friend told me.
This reminds me of the Hillsborough incident in the uk very famous where a bunch of people got crushed at a soccer game , i feel that korea should do the same thing they did which is strict measures so people can safely enjoy the holiday ,gosh all those poor people alot could of been teens aswell just trying to have a good time just horrible gah
The Itaewon disaster is unfortunately tied to a lot of politics. I've seen footage of Shibuya on Halloween and how well organized everything was by an enormeous police presence. In Itaewon however, they couldn't do that because of shenanigans with the president of SK - he's not currently living in the Blue House and instead chose to live somewhere else, where the local police force would have to provide constant security. That spilled over onto the force responsible in Itaewon and there were simply not enough police around to manage the crowd.
One thing they should try to do is spread it out. It's not good if everyone is in Shibuya. That said, the Shibuya crossing itself is basically safe. People see pictures of the huge crowd there as if that's dangerous, but it's probably not unless there was actually some sort of attack. It should likely push itself out up Dogenzaka and south of the station if it gets too crazy. Center-gai maybe, though it's still fairly wide with lots of outlets. But there are a lot of long, tiny alleys in Shibuya and that's where the real danger is. I don't know what the condition of these are, but of course if the event keeps getting bigger and bigger eventually the crowds will start feeding into the alleys and creating death traps. Again, effort should be made to spread it out. Try to get people to go to Odaiba or Yoyogi or Hibiya for some sort of alternate events.
Id say if they died than its human nature, i bet if it was in japan people would not die because people would behave in an orderly manner and humanely. I hope they learn for the next event but if the people behaved like that than it was inevitable. Some people may call it a tragedy but i think its necesary, because todays youths brains are really turning to mush with social media, modern education, life in generel where they live etc... Rules of Nature are absolute and noone is an exception, what happened in korea proves it. So there is not ned to ban it, just people should learn.
i spent the early part of halloween handing out candy to trick or treaters, later in the evening i went to the costume party at the pub and late into the night iwas playing scary games with my friends on discord, pretty much what my halloween was like pre pandemic really and its an enjoyable evening.
It's human nature to follow the crowd and move in btwn but it's hard when other ppl think the same or even stay in one place to chat or chill. Ppl need some officers or volunteers to control the movement of the crowd, but with so many ppl and lack of officers, the crowding went out of hand. I heard korea had 600 police officers out during Halloween in the past, but this year was smaller at 100 all spread out elsewhere. They were definitely short staffed and did not prepare for the large groups to enter itaewon because there r other parts of the city that also have parties and crowds forming. It's just itaewon that went wrong really fast
This reminds me something similar in Hong Kong. In 1993, Lan Kwei Fong, a popular pub and bar area. If i remembered, during Christmas eve, a open party turned into a crush due to rowdy participants influenced by alcohol. Around 20 people were crushed to death. If someone knows more about it, please do expand on it.
Another channel Mrs. Eats talked about how Halloween used to have (and for some, still has) a negative reputation in Japan, especially with older folks due to foreigners taking over, drinking and causing disturbances on the Yamanote line. Is this still a thing?
Honestly I don't think they should ban it I think they should just take better precautions than Korea did to prevent things like this happening
This ☝️
I mean, not only the government/ police, the people also should understand when so many people where there. Where is their responsibility? It was doomed from the start.
Just deploy more police forces
@@PureWhiteWolf honestly!!! Like who goes, “hmmm this is super crowded, I’ll just join in this narrow space, surely nothing bad will happen!” Common sense can save lives, ppl…
@@autumnlove96able That is true, but as i see it. We live as sheeps, as long their is many people, more will come. We have rejected common sense a long time a go, it's very sad those who died and it's sad for their family and friends. But if they did have some common sense. Then those people would still be alive. What i fear the most, is that this will be forgotten and it will happen again.
It is not a holidays fault but an human error . A lot of things went horribly wrong all at once but you can't say that it couldn't have happend during any other big event or holiday .
So no . I don't think Japan should ban Halloween.
Instead , new rules and preventive measures should be put in place , so such tragedy never happens again .
This is how I feel. Surely there’s a reasonable middle ground between completely banning something and allowing it to get so out of hand it makes Philadelphia Eagles fans feel uncomfortable with the amount of chaos
Rules put in place might have contributed to that happening. Apparently south korea have some rule that limits the number of people allowed in each bar in relation to area, which causes long queues and massification outside. While inside is not even crowded. The natural order when bars are full is entering seeing it sucks and leaving the fuck out. Well that was replaced by everyone waiting to enter locals that did not let anyone in with no progression lmao
This is the saddest thing to hear about, in such an unusual circumstance.
still should be banned until mf grow brain cells
A big thing to keep in mind too is that a lot of these folks working front of house, security, event planning, etc have likely been out of work for some time.
Or, they’re brand new at doing this. Not sure about Seoul and Tokyo, but a lot of friends where I live (NYC) just left as they were suddenly out of work. Unless you’re affiliated with a big label or promoter like Insomniac or Boiler Room or something, nightclubs and venues run on tight margins.
That's terrifying, you're never catching me in a crowd like that. Nothing is worth that claustrophobic feeling and all the potential dangers.
I get that feeling during rush hour in Japan 😭
Japan had this literally on daily basis, that's called rush hour. The main difference is the people tried their best not to push each other, and also the crowd control group being actually competent. It is bad, but not something new or unexpected.
Crowds like this happen everyday in tokyo
That is how we are in the West because our population density even in big cities doesn't tend to be as extreme as in some Asian countries. People there had to overcome that natural instinct to avoid densely packed crowds to survive aspects of city life, which leaves them more vulnerable in situations like this where there is no crowd control present and the streets and alleyways are so narrow.
I think the solution would be to bar off the narrow areas during busy times like holidays or events, and only let a certain number of people in as though it were a carnival or something. That way they can prevent the crowds there from getting too dense. All attendees should be reminded to be patient and not push or move too close together. Tell everyone to keep an arm's length apart when on the move and not to block the walkways. Have some security scattered about to intervene if they see a dangerous crowd building up in one spot.
@KanashiiFX They LITERALLY had to be crushed every time they board a train in rush hour. The station attendant literally football tackled them into the cabin. The difference is of course, staying in order...
I've never been to Japan for Halloween, but Itaewon is a place with small streets and steep hills, it was a neighborhood mostly occupied by foreigners and outsiders back in the day, so it was not meant to have crowds of thousands of people like it does during Halloween. I would argue the police should've known crowds would be even worse than years before (and it HAS been bad years before COVID. Halloween weekend in Itaewon gets crazy, with hundreds of people riding the trains in full costumes and whatnot) but I agree that it was just an unfortunate event.
The thing that gets me about the Korean Halloween tragedy is that there was only 1 single cop trying to guide the crowd.
Banning Halloween because of this would be as stupid as the British banning Football because they had things like this happen in their stadiums. Take the time to figure out the what and the why things went wrong and FIX it.
he obviously made a clickbait title
@@purpleplanet888 Yeah, people seem to be ignoring this part totally. No official source in Japan is asking, "Should we *BAN* Halloween?", just attempting to avoid issues after a tragedy surrounding it the day prior and several issues that have popped up in previous Halloween celebrations (which are hardly any different than any other countries various celebration holidays). All he could do was say "Some old people question if it should be allowed"...yeah, no shit Joey, there are old people in every country in the world who don't understand the youth of several generations after them just like their great grandparents didn't understand them.
*tl'dr -* Ever since he started covering Japanese news with increasing frequency the titles have just ramped up to insane levels of clickbait and no fan wants to admit it.
@@Goldenkitten1 I admit he has been posting some topics I personally do not like on this channel. But I still enjoy the other contents joey make, especially the podcast and his collabs with Chris.
Spread awareness about guide to survive stampede
@@Goldenkitten1 I don't see what's wrong with the title. It's just a question to prompt discussion, not a statement. I didn't go into this with a false impression that Japan has set it's sights on banning Halloween. I went into it expecting a discussion about the Halloween culture in Japan and whether there are proper safety measures to prevent accidents from happening since Japan has had its fair share of Halloween-related incidents.
Pretty sure that stuff happens every year.... Not only at Halloween. I think it was just unfortunate that they got caught up in the middle of the crowds. But I do agree that proper measures should've been taken to prevent this from happening.
I had seen a video of one cop struggling to direct people on Reddit, just the one policeman. There should have been many more helping keep people spread out or moving.
@@sneedmando186 iirc people were calling the police hours before the incident worsened but unfortunately they didn't take the calls seriously
@@controlcon oh man that’s terrible. It makes me wonder if the police chief didn’t want to look bad or something
@@sneedmando186
Itaewon normally is always full it's a party/tourist area.
and maybe they had something else to do.
The people also hold responsibility for their actions. Because I saw people going left and right.
Everyone thought about themselves.
Which lead to the disaster.
Crowd crushes and human stampedes do happen relatively often. In fact the very next day there was another incident where 135 people died in India. It can happen at any time when there are more people than a location can comfortably hold.
There’s an article where some police call transcripts were revealed and multiple people called worried about other’s safety in an alleyway and the police kept saying that they’ll look into it and will send some police officers to where the reports were at and I personally think they just said it without doing anything since multiple people died that night in the alleyway and I think as long as the Japanese police officers listen to peoples reports it will be okay
I was at Shibuya Halloween this year and also in 2018. This year there were police officers stationed every few meters on stands above the crowd directing traffic and people with speakers, also directing the flow of walking right from the station. They were working their butts off and it felt so much safer and calmer compared to 2018. They definitely took notes and improved on controlling it in a safe way, so i dont think they have any need to ban it since they showed how well they could control it this year.
I've been to itewon on non-holiday day and still felt claustrophobic... Maybe i am personally too used to cities with less population density. But it is clearly the authorities fault for not doing the crowd management. I have witnessed crowd management in dubai during new year celebrations - they had police officers fishing out people with small children and guiding them to metro station and volunteers handing out water bottles. In general being in that crowd was horrible but the crowd was handled good
Quick answer: No, but be aware of this and try to prevent it as a society.
I watched a few livestreams of shibuya during Halloween and I did see police at certain points controlling the flow of people, they even sectioned off the famous crosswalk area so it seems like they're remaining vigilant, whether that's because of what happened in Seoul im not sure but regardless its good to see some action being taken
That's because shibuya officers actually gotten know this especially with hundreds of complaints about some weirdos harassing women in shibuya in halloween that they take action to it
@@cyrilmarasigan7108that might be part of the reason, but in my 7 years of living in Japan, there’s always police controlling human traffic in any big events, including festivals, concerts, halloween, and even during the World cup celebration just last week and even a few days ago, even tho it was early in the morning...
I've watched a bunch of Korean channels talk about this when it first happened, and it was just a question of *when* not *if,* because unfortunately much of human nature is cure rather than prevention. 😞 There were already party goers that were in Itaewon the night before the tragedy, and they were partying hard into the morning of the tragedy, and the crowds were already intense. Authorities should've known and been more prepared for it but they simply failed to do so. The first street party in Itaewon in 3 years with no mask requirements was always going to be massive, and many have mentioned that it was basically inevitable. The street in question slopes rather steeply downwards, and there are 3 streets that also bottleneck into the one juncture which makes crowd control even more necessary. I don't believe Halloween should be banned - the event/celebration is not the issue - but strict safety measures need to be enforced beforehand. The national period of mourning in SK also goes until November 5th.
I live in korea and had friends in Itaewon, luckily none were hurt
There were official transcripts released where people were calling police up to 4 hours before the incident and police not reacting properly or at all until the actual crush began. Officials have since apologized for this. It's horrible tragedy that may have been prevented but thats hindsight. Holidays like this aren't the issue Itaewon gets regularly busy like that and it's honestly surprising it didn't happen before.
this could have happened due to any sort of crowd, whether it be a holiday or a sports game. this easily could have been due to another holiday. (I assume there are others that bring people outside like Halloween does)
This reminds me a lot of what happened at a football stadium here in England, it’s just another tragedy that in hindsight could have been avoided. All they can do now is make more rules and regulations to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I feel really bad for the families of the victims though
I lived in Osaka and goes to both this year and last year's Halloween, I think it is quite dense with people and crowds but the road/place in this case Doutonbori, Shinsaibashi theres still alot of spaces and not to mention theres police watching over managing the crowds, so I don't think it should be ban since Japan has a good place and management...
This tragedy has really affected me personally, because something similar happened in my hometown outside a disco, and somebody from my secondary school actually died, so this did bring up some painful memories and I give love to all the families of the victims❤🕊
Everything the most popular comments said + they did say the police officers in Korea didn't react fast enough. And from what I've seen of halloween on Kaho's stream in Shibuya police was literally everywhere. Japan is doing just fine when it comes to safety.
Honest opinion: This isnt enough to call for a ban on celebrating a holiday but should instead be used as a precedent to increase monitoring and security instead, until there is a much more significant enough call for it.
If celebration of Halloween were to be banned over what happened this time, you'd have to risk banning other holidays on grounds of accidents caused by unrelated events with things that can be used to celebrate the holiday with an example being fireworks disasters, either from improper storing of it which could lead to a devastating explosion that would level the storage building and surrounding buildings (Seest fireworks disaster more than a decade ago in Denmark as an example), or firework displays with highly premature accidental ignitions of fireworks closer to the ground where people are.
Crowds can be in any festival, celebration, protest etc
Banning one festival won't make a difference .
If its known and estimated that at a particular day there is going to be huge crowd gathering
Take better precautions to mobilize it so that everyone is safe.
Banning or saying "don't go to crowded places" isn't the solution
That was the fault of the S. Korean government. They knew they would have a crowd, they knew people wanted to hang out again after covid prevention was lifted, and they even had people calling since that afternoon, but they never took it seriously until too late. It was an excuse to say that there were no organizers like a BTS concert.
Halloween's already been on the chopping block in Japan for decades.
i live in korea and i think the best thing any country can do is just learn from sk’s government’s mistakes. they had emergency calls coming in for hours asking for police intervention and it still happened. they should have closed off the main streets and in the past for festivals in itaewon they used small alleys like that for one way walk ways.
i think halloween here is going to be a little different forever, but i hope a time comes when we can enjoy halloween here again someday. i would hate for other countries to go through that as well.
(btw pronunciation is like ee-tae-one so you were close!)
3:40 sure but who the hell look at that and think "i guess im going to try swiming into people, that seems like an amazing idea!"
Something around that Seoul story just seems shady. I mean i understand that people gathered together in a massive crowd, but how the feth did they get crushed by one another? I don't know if those people were really frail, but 150+ people going into cardiac arrest for being crushed by, well, other people, doesn't seem plausible. I've been dwelling in moshpits and i have had a fair share of beatdowns back in my day and i must say that a human body can stand a lot of pressure and damage before collapsing. That whole story is borderline fishy.
That said, "banning" things is never the answer to anything, they should have planning to prevent what happened there and still have a couple of paramedics just in case. The best take here is prevention.
Yo Joey,
I live in Korea, I've been to the street where the tragedy happened. The Iteawon area is often over crowded, and it's a popular place for expats. I think the bigger issue is that there were calls to the police 4 hours before the tradgedy happened with concerns with over crowding. The local police have apologised and admitted fault. There are rumours the crowd surge started with a 'celebraty' siting which have been largly ignored too. Honestly it's a messy situation and having to check your friends aren't dead is a horrible position to be in, Halloween is most definetly cancelled this year >
Hearing what happened in Seoul is so tragic and heartbreaking 😢
There were MULTIPLE phone calls to the police earlier that day asking them to come and control the traffic down that alley out of fear of an accident. Unfortunately they ignored them. Last year during Halloween, the police would come and break up large groups of people like this for covid and literally just ride around with sirens and ask people to leave an area if it got too poplar (especially in places like Hongdae and Itaewon which are meant for nightlife). It’s a shame that they decided it wasn’t worth the effort this time due to relaxed covid laws. I think that’s why it’s so frustrating, because it was preventable.
There's a yearly medieval fair here in Portugal that takes place in an entire village. It's so popular that the police needs to siege the place and limit how many people get into it, because being an old village with tight walled streets, the exact same thing would happen here...
So Seul needed more crowd control like that, and after this tragedy I'm sure it will.
I see a crowd half the density of that, I would just walk away.
This happened in Spain a few years ago, because a massive halloween party was way over capacity with bad emergency exit planning. After that, emergency planning and capacity laws became way more strict. It's sad but many times it takes tragedies like this to make the government do something about it.
A little tie bit
They are pushing the police phone operators out as scapegoat because people were calling about the overcrowding of this area over an hour before people started dying
Apparently the operators didn’t care or thought it wasn’t worth it so they didn’t send help
The very worst case is that they could probably ban mass volume crowds, but I don't see that happening. What made Seoul's incident deadly is the fact that it happened on a tight downward-sloping alley that is unregulated by not just the authority, but the the people within that crowd as well. Honestly if this type of crowd were to emerge in a flat level area, things would be nowhere near as bad or even non-existent compared to what happened in Seoul. Hell, many Japanese people are familiar with this setting during rush hours when they cram into sardine-packed subways. People just need to be aware and responsible.
158 people now.
Also the chief cop committed suicide because there where 119/ police calls 2 hours before the crush happened and the police didn’t take it seriously.
tbh I feel Korea is a really depressed place, they might have some mental issue doing these deadly things
00:05 damn every single month???? I needa party w y’all
This is more human error than the holiday itself.
Also, the areas are very different from each other.
I've been around the Shibuya Crossing area, and from my opinion, even if there are even 100K people in the area, there are smaller intersecting streets that people can move to to avoid the crowd. Also, the streets are flat and well lit.
The main hazard of Itaewon is that there are no organizers, the street itself is narrow with no way else to go but where the crowd is and is on an uphill road.
It's sad that this happened in the first place.
I've been going every year since 2015 and this was the first year I didn't attend. The ban on alcohol isn't new, it was in place for the last 3 years at least. Anti-masking protests have been taking place outside Shibuya station every year since the pandemic, lol.
Worst thing I saw was a van trying to drive through a dense crowd in 2018. Guys started kicking the van, which only made the driver panic. Ended up seeing people caught between the van and a street railing and some dude dropped his box with a snake in it (??). Don't think anyone was hurt but it could have been much worse. Thing have been much more tame recently.
It's crazy how people think Halloween is an American thing lol, it's a Celtic, pagan festival. It has nothing to do with America. It is from Irish, Scottish and Welsh origin primarily. I lived in Australia and everyone thought Halloween was an American holiday :/
Used to go to a vocational school just around the corner from Shibuya crossing (pre pandemic). Remember being at school during the halloween and when I went outside the school I think it was around 10 police vans parked on the street in preparation for the evening.
I've been in some wild and crowded mosh pits in my day. About a decade ago at Warped Tour, I saw Enter Shikari, and I had an almost traumatic experience where I was nearly crushed and experienced true claustrophobia for the first time. Because I'm over 6 foot, people were squeezing me at my sides. It was so tight that I felt like I either had to climb UP, or duck DOWN underneath everyone elses torsos, where the pressure was. I even was picked up off the ground, and it felt like being in an ocean with massive waves that just toss you around, but also crushing your chest, etc... JUST THE THOUGHT of people going through this in a worse way, where people actually died... it's just unimaginably terrifying to me, and very few things really scare or terrify me.
According to people who were in the crushing and some reporters, this year in itaewon were little to none officers unlike the years before; there where no organizations taking care of the Halloween party, so it was responsibility of the local government of yeongsan; they didn't had officers available due to the actual president using the whole capacity of the yeongsan province police, because he didn't move to the blue house due to his chamán telling him the blue house had bad "Feng shui"; yeongsan police was complaining about not having staff available, taking blame for not being able to answer the 10+ calls they received from hours before the crushing; the people there were stupid for entering the alley when it was full, yet other years with the same amount of people nothing happened, giving them a fake sense of security; if there's someone to blame is the presidents and the local government for saying they didn't expected so much people even if it was the first Halloween party in years, it was obvious a lot of people were going, they should had make a plan.
A lot of people saved themselves by leaving itaewon before or having crossed the intersection minutes before the crushing.
The hashtags are Itaewon and 이태원 if you want to block them, the images are still graphic 😞 everything is so sad and that they could have avoid it makes it sadder
I was there (luckily wasn’t in the crush) and can confirm VERY few police (not sure I even saw one) were there. I heard at work they were with the president and saw videos of the same event in 2017 which was full of police and had 2x the attendees.
I am glad to see someone thinks as me in one aspect. As you said, "people there were stupid for entering the alley when it was full". I know they were expecting this night so much, but did no one stop to think at a certain point that the street was already crowded and left somewhere else? Is that the only street in the whole city to celebrate Halloween? And I go even further, MUST Halloween be celebrated at the risk (certainty I would say) of a disaster like that?
I don't know, if you see it is too dangerous, just either go somewhere else or don't celebrate it.
I simply don't get how things like that get to happen.
If Korean people are so psychologically stressed that they are willing to take these risks, let me tell you one thing: they are really fucked up.
Lastly, my condolences to all who were involved and to the 151 affected families.
@@haganeelric98 with the social pressure they have to leave their lives at school, college and the work it's no surprise really, one girl on insta who told her story and why she left Korea told how, when having problems, her boss told her to just begin drinking like the rest of them, it's awful to read and it's common 😞
And, also, the work comes first thing, there's one girl that's been for years in Mexico(a) now and recently she had to take her sister (b) with her, since the vacation the sister (b) took to see her (a), (the girl (a) can't go back to Korea or her burn out turns on and ends up on the hospital since day one) (b) she was force by her work to work until the morning not going home and to stay at work on the weekends because they were blaming her for taking a vacation when the others were working, she got so burnt her husband sent her to her sister (a) her story it's awful, and it's so normal the suicide rates are enough for Korea to be despairing 😞
Those are the stories I remember that prove why a lot don't care about their own security and only wanted to get drunk 😞
Thank you for the info on why this happened this year. I think the president should have his own security detail that travels with him wherever he goes instead of taking up so much police personnel. It makes no sense to subject an entire city to a police shortage for the safety of only one man. So selfish.
@@arlicelovely1689 That's so horrible. It sounds like Korea needs stricter worker's rights regulations to stop employers from abusing them like that. That is insane.
im worried about how that would affect manga and anime, so it should stay but people should slow down and be in less of a hurry when theres people around on a event when someone is knocked over it means a busy people needs to instantly be noted maybe putting on like a i dont know a beeping sound buzzer on the front of a shirt during holiday events so someone could be heard when they fall over like a fall over beep buzzer so people know to stop and lift someone up off the floor and ask if they need an ambulance.
Joey, there's an important thing to note here - What happened in Korea was due to negligence of the government and forces. It's a lot to dive into, but worth reading up on. It wasn't any difference in terms of quantity of people compared to pre-pandemic years, in fact this year even less people attended than say, 2019. The head of the police received a call about the crush TWO HOURS after it had already happened, and people started calling the police about the danger of the situation few hours prior, but nothing was done. And if we dive even deeper, their current president requested hundreds of policemen to monitor him that day because instead of living at the Blue House like their president should (the Blue House is practically the White House of South Korea), his 'shaman' that he takes everywhere told him there's bad feng shui in the house, and so he decided to reside someplace else that's in the Itaewon area. Because of that, over 800 police officers were assigned to guard him around the clock and also guard a (MUCH smaller in quantity) protest that was happening outside his house, instead of being at Itaewon and looking after the 100k celebrators. So instead of 800-900 officers guarding Itaewon, you had 200 who had no clue how to control the situation after it escalated. So if you ask me, there's definitely someone to blame here, and that's the incompetence of the system. It was 100% preventable.
I saw a live stream of the Shibuya crossing on halloween night and yeah it didn't look safe at all.
Japan has a better system when it comes to large celebrations . I’ve been to and have many friends in Japan. Every time I’ve been to and have seen some large gathering, Halloween or new year, there is always precautions and police present. I’ve never seen it get like that (s.k). And I might get a lot of angry comments but what happened in Korea was extremely stupid, I was almost amazed by the shear human stupidity *lack of preparation and control.
Honestly, by the way you describe this year's Halloween in Japan, I think they handled it pretty well already; no need to ban anymore if they keep this up.
Korea though... it's awful. That tragedy shouldn't have happened if 1) people had the common sense not to keep cramming themselves into tight places and big crowds, and 2) if the district's authorities actually paid attention to how it gets crowded there for Halloween every year, then they should've at least put some precaution to maintain safety and order.
Additionally, I wish Crowd Crush (and maybe even Stampede) precautions would be included in disaster safety training, in addition to response to natural disasters. They should be teaching these things in school, imo.
Actually squeezes are completely predictable. When organizing an event there IS someone that is supposed to do logistics and insert measures that discourage people from packing wall to wall like sardines so that a squeeze doesn't happen; traffic cones or stanchions to leave open space, the strategic placement of anticipated high traffic areas, etc. And lastly, security to make sure people don't pour into these cordoned-off areas. This would have made it so that less people would be able to get in, but it also would have made it so that when the fall occurred that the crowd could properly disperse with this extra space.
I imagine it being a public event made it so that nobody felt responsible for that role, and that led to something as tragic as this.
Thanks for having a bunch of interesting topics
The a Korea thing... and how is this related to Japan??? I mean who in the right mind would be so packed up in a ramp... Oh, right a debt ridden country that has no space, no safty first...
Just look at that ship seowl or the every 10 years economic crisis. Dont compare Japan to the soon to be homeless country.
Well when people that live their lives opressed by so much social rules, when they are enabled to just be themselves, it is clear as day that they would do these kind of stuff
I really do not mean to come across as that ignorant American when saying this, I’m just speaking from personal experience here. I feel terrible for all those people.
This is why you can’t completely trust local authority, not because of some misguided paranoia or conspiracy. But just for the simple fact of reality. Yes they are trusted and responsible for keeping the city safe, but it does not “guarantee” it.
You absolutely have to be aware of your surroundings, do not just go with the flow and do what everybody else does. And even though probably not common in that part of the world, with things going on that are just increasingly disturbing, you can’t afford to not be cautious.
You have to be alert, have an exit.
And even then there’s only so much you can do, I remembered hearing about the whole Travis Scott concert debacle, and how painful and difficult that was for some people. It was a situation where people rushed past security and the ticket gates, also leading to a crowd crush. And it’s not really any of those concert goers fault, especially ones that were just already there and had paid for their tickets.
Obviously the situation is different, and I don’t think there’s really anyone at fault, and by that I mean it didn’t seem to be a situation that was out of malice or intent to hurt people, if anything it seems to be more of an issue of preparation or failure to act.
Its not celebrated any differently in America that's exactly how we celebrate here too.
No one to blame? The Yoon administration is to blame in my opinion.
1) He decided to move his office into the Yongsan District (Itaewon area) simply because his corrupt shaman didn't like the feng shui of the blue house.
Due to this he uses 700 police officers DAILY just to escort him to the office. It's also because of him that the street was not blocked off for pedestrians on halloween.
2) 6000 police officers were sent to a small protest against the Yoon administration 10 mins away instead of focusing on the well known crowded Halloween event in itaewon.
3) Only 137 officers (58 in offical uniform) were sent to Itaewon with a focus on cracking down on minor drug related offenses NOT crowd control.
4) The polic officers had calls coming in about the dangerous crowds as early as 6:30pm. People were even physically walking over to an office which is a stones throw away from alley to warn them people where going to die. The officers did not react in time.
In past years they have sent out hundreds of officers to manage the crowds in itaewon and there have been no casualties. This isn't the fault of the holiday or any of the young people who went there to have fun. They should have been safe.
I was there in Itaewon, but luckily we left just before it turned bad.
Ultimately the crush in SK is a failure of public safety/event safety. Which is tough, because heading off the disaster probably needed to start hours before it happened. You can't control a sea of people, you can only stop it from forming. But your efforts will be made fun of if you send 100 safety officers to watch a crowd of 50 party goers. Maybe even called wasteful, so you get fewer resources for the next event.
I grew up on Sydney's Northern Beaches in Australia. Halloween used to be exciting because no one in my neighbourhood celebrated it. The majority of the houses didn't have candy, so they gave me money, and I usually made a couple hundred dollars.
my parents are kenyan and asian, and we live in the states so they've always been so weary of me going out on big nights SPECIFICALLY halloween and it always seemed so overprotective and annoying. but after what seeing what happened in Seoul I completely understood
Lol, that's completely ridiculous. Halloween in America is mostly a holiday for little kids. It is true that people in their teens and 20s will go to house parties with their friends, but it's literally mostly a holiday for little kids. It also mostly doesn't involve people bunching up but rather going house to house and getting free candy. Your parents are definitely being ridiculous.
@@takanara7 no yeah i get what you mean and i mostly feel that way too, but I think I just mean I understand the caution a bit more now as I got older and due to recent events
I was in Shibuya at Halloween in 2018 and it was unbelievably packed. Just like this one except the area is not slopped. Scary and exciting at the same time.
I really can't grasp how you get crushed in a crowd like that. Like....wut lmao
America handled this much better instead of having 1 town host hallloween, they have the giant sports stadiums host the events with capacities of 15,000 to 100,000 for the adult/college students while kids would be taken to local neighborhoods going door to door for candy. Also Marijuana is still illegal in USA, there are only 19 states that have legalized it.
Fabulous video, Joseph!
Call him Joey.
@@TheOtakuDude No
@@TheOtakuDude I mean Josh really made a good video tho
Its a collective fault to the people who went out partying
For a 'rich' country, south korea sure doesn't spend alot of money on their police force..
Thanks for covering this Joey. It was an extremely unfortunate and sad event that could have been prevented. I was there that night around the time the crush began. Luckily I was at the bottom of the slope and was able to work my way out of the crush and escape to another part of the area. The main criticism from many here was the absence of police for crowd control. I remember seeing only a few police at the scene and it has been said roughly 100 officers were sent to the area but only a few of those cops were given instructions for crowd control. I saw roughly 3~4 cops in the crowd when I was there and two of them were carrying a woman that had passed out. This year the Halloween crowd is estimated to be about 130k people. In 2019, the crowd was smaller I believe but there was significantly more police presence. In 2017 in Itaewon the crowd was actually bigger, with 200k being in Itaewon and there were no deaths as the police presence and the effectiveness of crowd control measures. There were calls from Itaewon this year starting at 6pm, a full 4 hours from the crush, and cops ignored the complaints of it being hard to move during that time. Police also called their superiors and told them the crowd was getting hard for them to control and still the superiors did not send backup. This event was an unfortunate set of circumstances but it was totally preventable and is completely on the superiors of the police who ignored warnings hours ahead and by officials not preparing properly like how it was years before. There is also the case the recently the president of South Korea moved the presidents working office to the same area in Yongsan, which is the same district Itaewon is in, also stressed the districts police force thin. The Yongsan police now has the responsibility to provide security for the president and police the area. There was also a protest against the current Korean president on the same day as the Halloween celebrations which was being covered by thousands of police officers. So again, this incident has many factors but the primary factor was a lack of preparation by the police and governmental officials.
Even in America, we have some rules on Halloween like children shouldn't trick or treat after 7 or 8pm, etc.
Amazing video Joey, fantastic job.
Halloween was a shitshow this year. I was coming back to London from a trip home and arrived to my station being evacuated because teenagers were firing fireworks at people. The loud evacuation notices, 100s of police, helicopter, fireworks etc. was no fun as I try and move along with my suitcase tryna figure out how tf I get home. And then I came home to the news of South Korea.
What part of London is this??? Lived here my whole life and never heard anything close
@@thundurr This was this Monday Statford Station.
@@pixielove25 Ah Stratford, that explains it, i was thinking more central
Methods that I know are from New York and what NYC does in Times Square for New Years Eve is to let people in to one area until it is full, then shut it off with barricades except to residents, who are sent cards to prove their residence ahead of time. Then people go to the area on the next street until that gets cut off. And so on and so forth. Then no more are allowed into the area after a certain hour.
Another method to use is to have another large public event held. That divides up the crowd.
Yet another method of crowd division is the Rockafeller Center Christmas current method is to have celebrity performances in several different locations around the city.
I've watched a few seconds of the footage taken by people in the situation itself on Twitter, and those few seconds still haunts me as it is burnt into my memory.
It is disturbing and horrible and if you're somebody who cannot handle things like that, I advise you to not look for it
I know it was horrible everything that happened that day, but korea has noting to do with japan. If they couldn't help or maintain order on itaewon, it doesn't mean that would happem in every part of the world or stop doing that
"No one to blame"
~There's always someone to blame... in this case they should've had officers(people responsible for the officers) and had they counting how many people were there and allow only a certain ammount... this is like, normal thing to do when it's known that a place will be crowded even if it's public.
Its ironic that Halloween in old celtic culture is a celebration of living and the dead.
watching this and then realizing that Joey subscribers nr is on 666K. it's all good ppl just a number.
Asian countries should take note from NYC, and do a family friendly parade. There’s rarely ever a problem in the Halloween parade at NYC.
no worries mate, 이태원 is pronounced ee te won
Thank you for the video, Love from Seoul, south korea
As someone who doesn't drink, smoke, or partake in drugs. I only ever saw Halloween as a time for kids to have fun and get candy.
When i heard about the street party i honestly had no clue how i would handle it because i don't take part in drinking and such.
If people can find a way to have fun without those im all for it.👍
I still don't know what i would do there.🤣
Regulate and monitor. Dont allow an insane amount of rowdy young adults in a confined space. If they want to party it up, go inside somewhere spread out. It would be like americans partying in the streets, except there’d be millions of people injured and murdered lol. Sad what happened to SK. And I am glad it didnt happen in Japan. I was worried it may.
The stuff I've seen is that the crush was very preventable. There were multiple times before the crush happened that ppl there called the police about the crowd getting too dangerous and the police just didn't do anything. Supposedly there is even a police station close by.
It's not Halloween that needs to get banned unless you're banning all street fests, you just need crowd planning from the city gov and police. And the authorities definitely deserve blame and responsibility.
There are other street fests and events that attract similar crowds.
Reminds me of the love parade disaster (10 dead, 650~ injured)
As Agent K once said, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
韓国の事件は、韓国の国民性の問題であって、ハロウィーンとは関係ありませんよ。だから、ほとんどの日本人は、渋谷のハロウィーン中止などは考えないでしょう。
If Korea had remained a part of Japan this would never have happened
Apparently there was a rumor that "unnamed" idol showed up at the halloween festivities and it went downhill from there. But it's a rumor friend told me.
This reminds me of the Hillsborough incident in the uk very famous where a bunch of people got crushed at a soccer game , i feel that korea should do the same thing they did which is strict measures so people can safely enjoy the holiday ,gosh all those poor people alot could of been teens aswell just trying to have a good time just horrible gah
The Itaewon disaster is unfortunately tied to a lot of politics. I've seen footage of Shibuya on Halloween and how well organized everything was by an enormeous police presence. In Itaewon however, they couldn't do that because of shenanigans with the president of SK - he's not currently living in the Blue House and instead chose to live somewhere else, where the local police force would have to provide constant security. That spilled over onto the force responsible in Itaewon and there were simply not enough police around to manage the crowd.
One thing they should try to do is spread it out.
It's not good if everyone is in Shibuya.
That said, the Shibuya crossing itself is basically safe. People see pictures of the huge crowd there as if that's dangerous, but it's probably not unless there was actually some sort of attack. It should likely push itself out up Dogenzaka and south of the station if it gets too crazy. Center-gai maybe, though it's still fairly wide with lots of outlets. But there are a lot of long, tiny alleys in Shibuya and that's where the real danger is. I don't know what the condition of these are, but of course if the event keeps getting bigger and bigger eventually the crowds will start feeding into the alleys and creating death traps.
Again, effort should be made to spread it out. Try to get people to go to Odaiba or Yoyogi or Hibiya for some sort of alternate events.
Id say if they died than its human nature, i bet if it was in japan people would not die because people would behave in an orderly manner and humanely. I hope they learn for the next event but if the people behaved like that than it was inevitable. Some people may call it a tragedy but i think its necesary, because todays youths brains are really turning to mush with social media, modern education, life in generel where they live etc... Rules of Nature are absolute and noone is an exception, what happened in korea proves it. So there is not ned to ban it, just people should learn.
i spent the early part of halloween handing out candy to trick or treaters, later in the evening i went to the costume party at the pub and late into the night iwas playing scary games with my friends on discord, pretty much what my halloween was like pre pandemic really and its an enjoyable evening.
Thanks Joey for today's video 👍
They forgot about entity cramming 😔
New subscriber! And I don't think it's possible to ban Halloween because it celebrates on 10•31 every year! Nothing has changed or nothing new!
The footage is horrifying saw it on twitter without warning and it made me feel ill
It's human nature to follow the crowd and move in btwn but it's hard when other ppl think the same or even stay in one place to chat or chill. Ppl need some officers or volunteers to control the movement of the crowd, but with so many ppl and lack of officers, the crowding went out of hand. I heard korea had 600 police officers out during Halloween in the past, but this year was smaller at 100 all spread out elsewhere. They were definitely short staffed and did not prepare for the large groups to enter itaewon because there r other parts of the city that also have parties and crowds forming. It's just itaewon that went wrong really fast
This reminds me something similar in Hong Kong.
In 1993, Lan Kwei Fong, a popular pub and bar area. If i remembered, during Christmas eve, a open party turned into a crush due to rowdy participants influenced by alcohol. Around 20 people were crushed to death.
If someone knows more about it, please do expand on it.
Lack of enviromental awareness and blindly chasing trendy things without thinking would get you in this situation.
I’m Irish where it comes from and it’s loved more than Xmas lol 😂
Another channel Mrs. Eats talked about how Halloween used to have (and for some, still has) a negative reputation in Japan, especially with older folks due to foreigners taking over, drinking and causing disturbances on the Yamanote line. Is this still a thing?
As someone born in Korea as a us citizen this is *NOT* the image we want for our country and it's a disgrace, especially someone born in Seoul.