Fatal Crowd Crush: Lessons Learnt from the Itaewon Tragedy in the Republic of Korea

Abstract

Halloween crowd crush at Itaewon area, Seoul, South Korea, in October 2022 caused 158 fatalities, and became the big tragedy of the year. After Covid-19 pandemic, the loosening of Covid-19 lockdown measures in South Korea might cause many people to attend at festivals more than the previous years. Unexpectedly large crowds gathering with a lack of safety management may result in serious injuries and fatalities from crowd crush. To prevent fatal crowd crush, the government and private sectors should have a proper crowd management plan. This article gathers knowledge and information from guidelines, research and academic articles with the objective of reviewing knowledge of crowd crush, statistics of past events, mechanisms of injuries and dead, basic standards of crowd management, and recommendations on how to survive in crowd crush.