CRUSHING DISASTERS IN THE PAST

[Anchor Lead]

There have been multiple crushing disasters in the past. Performance venues or stairways are usually vulnerable to such accidents. The Itaewon disaster has many things in common with past incidents. The tragedy may have been prevented if safety measures had been taken properly based on the lessons from past tragedies.

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The last deadly crush before the Itaewon disaster occurred 17 years ago. It was at a K-pop concert held in Sangju, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province. The crush happened as roughly 5,000 people surged into the entrance all together.

[Soundbite] (Victim in 2005(VOICE MODIFIED)) : "Due to a sudden surge in crowds, organizers failed to control them. So people crushed each other, leading to the deaths."

In that accident, 11 people died and 162 others were injured. Like the Itaewon disaster, it happened as a large number of people clogged a narrow space. With crowds falling and crushing each other, elderly people and children in the front row were hit the hardest. A similar situation happened during an American pop group's concert in Seoul in 1992. Concertgoers stampeded toward the stage and tripped to cause a crush, which left a high school girl dead and 60 others injured. In the past, such incidents frequently happened on stairways. At an elementary school in Busan in 1980, some 100 students collapsed on a stairway and five of them were crushed to death. During a Lunar New Year holiday in 1960, about 70 travelers died or were injured in a crush at Seoul Station.

[Soundbite] Je Jin-ju(Former professor, Univ. of Seoul) : "Authorities could have devised preventive measures if they had predicted that large crowds would surge into a small space. But they failed to predict it."

The Itaewon disaster was no different. Crowds suddenly clamped into a narrow space. Again, there were no safety measures to control and protect large crowds from a possible deadly accident. Questions are being raised as to whether the tragic deaths of over 150 people could have been prevented if proper measures had been in place.