President Lee Jae Myung (C) meets family members of the victims of the 2022 crowd crush at Cheong Wa Dae in central Seoul, in this file photo taken July 16, 2025, and provided by his office. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 23 (Korea Bizwire) — The Halloween night in Itaewon began like any other — laughter spilling out of bars, music vibrating through narrow alleys — until it became a tragedy that left 159 people dead and a nation in disbelief.
Now, nearly three years later, a government audit has concluded that one of the country’s most consequential political decisions helped set the stage for disaster.
According to the audit, released Thursday, the relocation of the presidential office by former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration to Yongsan — just blocks from Itaewon — diverted police resources that might have prevented South Korea’s deadliest crowd crush.
The finding confirms long-standing suspicions that the move, carried out in the early months of Yoon’s presidency, reshaped the capital’s security priorities. After the relocation, police leadership in Seoul and Yongsan “prioritized stationing personnel for security near the presidential office,” the Office for Government Policy Coordination said.
That shift, the audit found, left fewer officers available to manage the surging Halloween crowds on Oct. 29, 2022.
A bereaved family member of a victim of the Itaewon crowd crush lays flowers at a memorial space for the victims at the site of the tragedy in Itaewon, Seoul, in this Oct. 29, 2023, file photo. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
The report portrays a city unprepared at nearly every level. Despite signs of overcrowding hours before the crush, there were no coordinated crowd control measures. Communication systems faltered, and post-disaster protocols — such as activating emergency command centers — were delayed or ignored.
“The audit is meaningful because it finally quantified what many already feared,” one police official said at a briefing. Between May and October 2022, after the relocation, the number of rallies within Yongsan jurisdiction surged from 34 to 921. Yet much of the police response capacity remained concentrated around presidential security.
The audit also faulted both the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Yongsan Ward Office for their failures before and after the tragedy. It found that early warnings were not escalated and that the city’s disaster reporting system effectively collapsed in the crucial first hours.
The government now plans to take disciplinary action against 62 officials for negligence or misconduct related to the disaster and its aftermath.
Itaewon, a popular nightlife district in central Seoul, is crowded with people on Oct. 31, 2020. (Yonhap)
The investigation was launched in July after President Lee Jae Myung met with bereaved families who pleaded for a full accounting before the three-year disciplinary window closed.
For the victims’ families, the audit’s conclusion — that institutional decisions, not just chance, shaped the tragedy — offers something rare in the long shadow of Itaewon: an official acknowledgment of blame.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
