Minister of the Interior and Safety Yoon Ho-jung visited the Hongdae Special Tourist Zone in Seoul one day prior to Halloween to inspect crowd safety management conditions.

Minister Yoon visited the on-site command center set up at Hongik Cultural Park to receive reports on Halloween crowd safety management measures from relevant organizations. He then toured the Hongdae Club Street and the Walking Street areas, checking for bottleneck sections or objects obstructing pedestrian flow on slopes and entrances.

He also inspected whether the artificial intelligence (AI) crowd density analysis system and emergency bells for urgent reports were operating properly, and checked whether public action guidelines were displayed in English, Chinese, and Japanese in addition to Korean so that foreign tourists could understand them.

The Hongdae Special Tourist Zone is an area where Halloween crowds gather every year due to a concentration of clubs and shops.

With foreign tourists visiting Seoul reaching 11.56 million by August this year, marking a 21.6% increase compared to the same period last year, crowd density is expected to be even higher.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety has been operating a ten-day special period for Halloween crowd management from October 23 to November 1, designating and managing 28 locations nationwide as key management targets, including Hongdae and Itaewon.

Among them, 12 areas expected to attract particularly large crowds—including Itaewon, Hongdae, Seongsu-dong, Konkuk University area, Gangnam Station, Apgujeong, Myeong-dong, and Ikseon-dong in Seoul, Chonnam-Gwangju Cheomdan District, Seomyeon in Busan, Dongseongro in Daegu, and Dunsan-dong in Daejeon—have been dispatched with pre-inspection teams and on-site situation managers.

In the case of Hongdae, about 300 safety personnel have been deployed, and movable safety fences have been installed throughout alleys to guide one-way traffic to the right.

Minister Yoon Ho-jung stated, "We will make every effort to ensure safety alongside relevant agencies so that the public can enjoy Halloween safely," and urged, "Please maintain order following the guidance of on-site safety personnel and familiarize yourselves with the public action guidelines for crowd accidents."

(Photo provided by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, Yonhap News)