S Korean police seek manslaughter charges over deadly crush

South Korean police are seeking charges of involuntary manslaughter and negligence against 23 officials, including law enforcement officers, for a lack of safety measures they said were responsible for a crowd surge that killed nearly 160 people. Despite anticipating a weekend crowd of more than 100,000, Seoul police had assigned 137 officers to the capital’s nightlife district Itaewon on the day of the crush. Those officers were focused on monitoring narcotics use and violent crimes, which experts say left few resources for pedestrian safety. Son Je-han, who headed the National Police Agency’s special investigation into the incident, said on Friday his team will now send the case to prosecutors. Those recommended for indictment include Park Hee-young, who is mayor of Seoul’s Yongsan district, and the district’s former police chief Lee Im-jae— two of the six who have been arrested. The results of the 74-day police investigation announced by Son mostly confirmed what was already clear — that police and public officials in Yongsan failed to employ meaningful crowd control measures for the expected numbers of Halloween revellers and essentially ignored pedestrian calls placed to police hotlines that warned of a swelling crowd hours before the surge turned deadly on October 28. Officials also botched their response once people began getting toppled over and crushed at a narrow alley clogged with party goers near Hamilton Hotel around 10 pm, failing to establish effective control of the scene and allow rescue workers to reach the injured in time, Son said. “(Their) inaccurate judgement of the situation, the slow distribution of information about the situation, poor cooperation between related institutions and delays in rescue operations were among the overlapping failures that caused the high number of casualties,” Son said at a news conference in Seoul.