▲ Song Doo-hwan, chairperson of the Special Investigation Commission on the October 29 Itaewon Disaster, delivers opening remarks during an interim briefing held at the Korea Press Center in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the 27th.
An interim briefing was held on the morning of the 27th by the Special Investigation Commission for Truth-Finding and Prevention of Recurrence of the October 29 Itaewon Disaster.
During the interim briefing held at the Korea Press Center, the commission announced institutional improvement proposals and future plans to prevent recurrence.
The commission first pointed out that the Itaewon disaster was not the fault of any single institution alone.
It was revealed that on the day of the disaster, there were no police officers in charge of crowd management at the scene, as the Yongsan Police Station had not even requested riot police.
Out of the 120 police officers deployed to the site, 49 were assigned solely to drug crackdowns, failing to establish separate crowd safety measures.
Investigation results showing that the Yongsan District Office neglected illegal extensions were also announced.
It was revealed that although illegal extensions around the alley where the disaster occurred had been detected since 2014, demolition orders were not issued, and only compulsory compliance fines were continuously imposed.
There were also moves within the Ministry of the Interior and Safety to evade disaster response.
The commission stated it has secured testimony from a former ministry official indicating that at the time, the ministry's control room was slow in disseminating instructions from the presidential office after the initial situation occurred, largely driven by a mindset that if the situation were spread quickly, "the Ministry of the Interior and Safety would become the disaster department" and a prevailing reluctance to take charge.
The commission views that such bureaucratic inertia to avoid disaster management jurisdiction delayed disaster response and the formation of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters.
The commission plans to further investigate accountability regarding personnel deployment and on-site judgment, including who made the decision not to deploy police riot police to the scene.
An explanatory session for the bereaved families of foreign victims is also scheduled to follow at 2:00 p.m. today.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
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