South Korea sentenced police involved in the Itaewon disaster to prison
FOA News – Two former South Korean police officers were convicted for destroying evidence related to a stampede that left 159 people dead in Itaewon in 2022.
This picture taken on October 29, 2022 shows onlookers watching as emergency workers tend to people who were in a Halloween stampede in the district of Itaewon in Seoul, South Korean. AFP PIC
The Seoul Western District Court on February 14 sentenced Park Sung-min, a former senior intelligence officer of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, to 1.5 years in prison. and a one-year suspended sentence for Kim Jin-ho, a former employee of the Yongsan District Police Department.
Two people were convicted for destroying four internal reports about risks related to large crowds gathering in the Itaewon area, before the stampede tragedy occurred.
The defendants should have actively cooperated with the investigation by preserving existing data, but instead they deleted or arbitrarily destroyed internal reports written before the accident. The judgment has paragraphs:
The Seoul Western District Court said that this is an act of “minimizing and hiding responsibility”, causing difficulties in efforts to “find the truth” and deserving of “severe punishment”.
Park and Kim are the first former police officers to be sentenced in connection with the Itaewon stampede disaster. Kim Kwang-ho, head of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, was indicted in January for allegedly “negligent response” in the incident.
This official was accused of not performing his professional duties well, reacting slowly, ignoring warnings and not being fully prepared to respond to emergency situations. If convicted, Mr. Kim will face a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison and a fine of $15,000.
In addition to Mr. Kim, a number of local officials were also prosecuted for shared responsibility in the Itaewon stampede. But so far, no high-ranking member of the Korean government has resigned or been prosecuted, despite a wave of criticism from the victims’ families.
Many people believe that the reaction of President Yoon Suk-yeol’s cabinet after the incident was inadequate, and criticized him for not yet issuing an official apology.
Mr. Yoon on January 30 vetoed a bill calling for the establishment of a special investigation committee into the cause of the Itaewon stampede, even though it had been passed by the National Assembly. Instead, he proposed financial compensation for the victims’ families, which increased Korean public discontent.
On the evening of October 29, 2022, about 100,000 people flocked to Itaewon Street to attend the Halloween festival, the first event in Seoul in three years after the government lifted many restrictions to prevent the Covid-19 epidemic.
The tragedy occurred when the crowd poured into a narrow alley. Some people tripped and fell on the ramp, while the crowd continued to push forward, falling on top of each other, killing 159 people and injuring more than 190, most of them young men in their 20s and 30s. This was one of the deadliest peacetime tragedies in Korean history.
Source: AFP, KBS World
