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By Park Yoon-bae
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The tragedy was the deadliest since the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry killed 304 people, mostly high school students. It is shocking that 156 people in their late teens and 20s were crushed to death amid Halloween festivities Saturday night.
After the Sewol sank, the Park Geun-hye administration vowed to strengthen safety rules and break corrupt ties between bureaucrats and businesses. However, the Itaewon catastrophe shows that nothing has changed at all.
In comparing the ferry disaster with the crowd crush, there is a striking similarity: a total disregard for public safety. A state or government has no reason to exist if it fails to protect the people.
It is shameful that such an unbelievable catastrophe occurred in South Korea, the world's 10th-largest economy. The Itaewon crowd crush has overshadowed the country's brilliant achievements, such as rapid economic development and democratization. Korea can never be an advanced country in a true sense if multiple such disasters continue to occur.
In fact, the country has failed to learn a painful, but valuable lesson from the Sewol tragedy. Politicians, bureaucrats, lawmakers and regulators have been long on words, but short on action to make the country a safe place to live.
Now we have to ask a question: Could the Itaewon disaster have been prevented? The answer is certainly yes when we look at the transcripts of the 12 emergency calls that started coming in around four hours before the disaster.
The National Police Agency made public the transcripts Tuesday, three days after the incident. Callers reported the crowd upsurge and alerted police about the potential dangers at the festive scene in the narrow 3.2-meter-wide inclined alley next to the Hamilton Hotel.
However, police did little to nothing to control the crowds. They seemed to underestimate the impending dangers, turning down the callers' desperate cries for help. Their inaction is hard to understand, especially when more than 100,000 people had already been predicted to gather in the area for Halloween celebrations.
In a word, the police cannot avoid criticism for their dereliction of duty. They did not follow safety manuals or guidelines on crowd control in responding to the highly volatile situation in Itaewon.
Aside from the police, high-level officials of the central and municipal governments have also revealed their lack of awareness about public safety.
One of them is Interior and Safety Minister Lee Sang-min who touched off controversy by saying that the disaster could not have been prevented even if more police had been dispatched to the scene. He seemed to be trying to shirk responsibility for the incident.
Taking into account all these circumstances together with the police's failure to enact preventive measures, the Halloween catastrophe can be seen as a manmade disaster.
The Yoon Suk-yeol administration should conduct a thorough investigation to find the exact cause of the disaster. Then it must take stern action against those responsible for the mishandling and poor response to the incident.
More importantly, the authorities need to overhaul the country's malfunctioning disaster prevention and response system. They should focus more on prevention of any possible safety-related disasters. Otherwise, they will never be able to build a safe country.
Most of all, policymakers, bureaucrats and lawmakers must change their mindsets and significantly improve their awareness of the importance of public safety. They should strengthen safety rules for the sake of the people, not from the perspective of politics.
Politicians of the ruling and opposition parties have so far been mired in partisan struggles without paying much attention to the lives of the people. Now, they must change and serve the interests of the people and the nation better.
The Itaewon Halloween tragedy should serve as a rare opportunity to ensure public safety moving forward. It is time for all members of our society to put their efforts into making South Korea a safe country.
The author (byb@koreatimes.co.kr) is the chief editorial writer of The Korea Times.
