The tragic incident that took place in Itaewon on October 29, when 156 people were killed in a crowd surge, is still very much raw. Yet what has angered the public most is the apparent lack of accountability from government officials, as well as their attempts to abdicate responsibility for what happened. President Yoon Suk Yeol has not issued an official statement regarding the tragedy, but did speak about how he was “grief-stricken and apologetic, as the president who is responsible for people’s lives and safety.” A clip of a speech made by Yoon on his 100th day in office has been making the rounds, in which he had highlighted the government’s responsibility for public safety:
“The government bears infinite responsibility for public safety. I will take care of the people until they feel safe.”
[1]
— Yoon Suk Yeol, president of the Republic of Korea, August 17, 2022
On October 31, Park Hee Young, the mayor of Yongsan-gu, visited the memorial altar for the victims of the incident, where she explained that the Halloween festival was in fact “not a festival, since a festival should have a set program and organizers. So it was just a situation, where people gathered together for Halloween.” Then, on November 7, during a meeting of the National Assembly’s Public Administration and Security Committee, she responded to a question about her absence at the meetings to discuss what to do on the Halloween weekend:
“Must I answer your question? Well, I have been in office for only four months. The picnic was in the morning, and the bazaar was at lunch, so it is not true to say that I did not attend the meetings [because of those events]. In any case, the deputy mayor said he would preside over the meetings, as usual, as he had done last year, so I agreed to that. Nevertheless there were aspects that l was not careful about.”
[2]
— Park Hee Young, the mayor of Yongsan-gu, November 7, 2022
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo was also criticized for his attitude and remarks at an impromptu press conference with the foreign media held on November 1. When asked whether the Yoon administration still believes that this tragedy could not have been prevented, he replied:
“Even if a lot of security personnel had been placed at the site [of the incident], there would have been some limitations [in responding] in a situation where the system wasn’t properly established [to handle such an incident].”
[3]
— Han Duck-soo, prime minister of the Republic of Korea, November 1, 2022
And then, when there was a glitch in the voice transmission for simultaneous interpretation devices, he made a joke, replicating an NBC reporter’s question about the government’s responsibility in the tragedy:
“At what point does the technical staff’s responsibility start in this case where we can’t really hear the interpretation that well, and to what extent does it apply?”
[4]
— Han Duck-soo, prime minister of the Republic of Korea, November 1, 2022
While his remark was not translated (the interpreters in fact sighed in hesitation before deciding not to translate the remark), many Koreans were outraged that the prime minister had made jokes and laughed during such a solemn occasion. In addition to this joke, he also tried to make light of the situation by mentioning, in English, how a big police force would be necessary to manage the crowd for “the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox.” On the following day, Han half-apologized by saying that he was sorry for making people uncomfortable “regardless of the context” in which the joke was made. He also stated that there were many people who had received his joke positively.
In addition, Jeong Mi-kyung, former Supreme Councilor of the People Power Party, attempted to shift the blame from the current government by asserting that the Moon Jae-in administration was responsible for the tragedy:
“What did the Democratic Party of Korea and President Moon Jae-in say after the Sewol ferry tragedy? They promised to put safety first going forward. They promised to prevent such accidents from happening again in the future. They said they’d build a system [to prevent such tragedies]. So, did you [the Democratic Party] make a system? You should have. Why didn’t you fix the 112 system[5]? The response system for firefighting and police, why didn’t you reorganize that? The Moon Jae-in administration is primarily responsible for why such an accident happened. Because you broke that promise. We all believed. That all national systems had been fully equipped to prevent such a major accident from happening in the future. But that was not the case.”
[6]
— Jeong Mi-kyung, former Supreme Councilor of the People Power Party, November 4, 2022
Her remark brought on an onslaught of responses from members of the public, who have bombarded her Facebook page and blog with criticism and nasty comments.
Although the tragedy is still fresh in people’s minds, the media have already moved on to the dispute between Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in regarding the custody of two Pungsan dogs, which Moon received as a gift from North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. And people are growing more and more tired of watching the government shift blame onto public servants, and of politicians from both the ruling and opposition parties using the tragedy to further their political agendas.