KB News Desk
Former president suggested it was inappropriate to use such words for ‘people who went to have fun’
Meeting minutes from the previous Yoon Suk Yeol administration showed that government officials had discussed depicting the Itaewon Disaster in value-neutral semantics, said an independent committee investigating the 2022 deadly crowd crush.
The National Commission for the Investigation of the October 29 Itaewon Disaster held a press briefing Tuesday to disclose findings from the government meeting held a day after the tragic incident. The commission said the government task force participants discussed calling the crowd crush the “Itaewon Accident” rather than “Itaewon Disaster,” and not using words like “victim” for those who lost their lives.
The crowd crush occurred on the night of Oct, 29, 2022, when people gathered in Itaewon, Seoul, to celebrate Halloween. As crowds increased, a narrow alley next to the Hamilton Hotel became bottlenecked, resulting in victims dying of suffocation and organ damage. The tragedy marked the deadliest crowd crush on record in South Korea, claiming 159 lives.
In Korean, the tragedy has widely been referred to as the “Itaewon Chamsa,” with the Korean word “chamsa” meaning disaster or tragedy.
The meeting in question was presided over by former President Yoon on Oct. 30, 2022. In it, then-Interior Minister Lee Sang-min instructed the name change because “the state may be held accountable later.”
“Considering that this accident has no perpetrator, ‘victims’ or ‘those sacrificed’ should instead be phrased as ‘the dead’ or ‘casualties,” Lee was quoted as saying in the meeting’s transcript.
Kim Eui-seung, then the first deputy mayor of Seoul for administrative affairs, was recorded as suggesting the incident should be referred to as the “Itaewon Accident” until the exact cause was determined.
While Yoon’s official position on the name change was not included in the 2022 meeting minutes, testimony given to the independent investigative commission suggests Yoon disapproved of designating the crowd crush a “disaster.”
“This accident occurred because of the overcrowding of the people who went to enjoy festivities and have fun. Is it appropriate to call it a disaster?” he allegedly said, according to official testimonies.
The National Commission for the Investigation of the October 29 Itaewon Disaster was launched in 2024. It has been tasked with probing who was responsible for the disaster, finding the exact cause, and drafting measures to prevent similar incidents from occurring again.
“I do not understand how (officials) could prioritize semantics above all else just moments after the incident, thinking ‘we shouldn’t let it be called so’,” said committee chief Song Doo-hwan. “It appears to be an attempt (by the government) to actively intervene to unify the phrases, rather than to leave it to individuals or society to naturally name it, all because the state may be held responsible.”
The meeting transcripts were drafted as official documents but were not officially registered.
The investigative commission will conduct further probes into the instructions for the name change, determining how the order was relayed, differences between what was actually said and what was left in the minutes, and statements that are not on the record.
It will also look into whether Interior Ministry officials committed perjury in hearings related to the incident or hid related records.
