Buzzing with fun and laughter till just the other day, Itaewon is quiet and grim, the deaths of 156 people in a Halloween stampede on October 29 casting a dark shadow on the hub of the South Korean capital’s glittering nightlife.
Some shops are open and many closed, there’s barely any traffic and the air is heavy with the fragrance of incense sticks at the makeshift memorial near the alley where a swelling crowd of party goers got out of control. The stampede that followed killed 156 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, and injured more than 170.
"People seem to be avoiding the area," said a taxi driver who has ferried barely any passengers to the entertainment district.
White chrysanthemums — symbolic of grief in South Korea — bottles of soju, a local liquor, chocolates and cigarettes are some of the farewell gifts mourners have left behind at the memorial near Hamilton Hotel.
"My pretty friend, Yu-na... Sorry," reads a letter, mourning the death of a dearly loved one who got caught in the crush.
Memories of the day are still fresh and many don’t want to discuss it.
"I'm sorry," said a tired shopkeeper, waiting for customers and refusing to talk about the tragedy that unfolded that night.
A fleet of around eight-10 police buses is stationed on the road leading to the narrow alley, now marked as a 'no entry zone' with orange tape and police personnel guarding the site in pairs.
"We don't know till when we will be here or when things will go back to normal," Kim, a police officer, told PTI.
That fateful day, an estimated 1,00,000 people gathered in the popular location, known for trendy nightclubs, restaurants and bars, for South Korea's biggest outdoor Halloween festivities. It was the first relaxation in social distancing protocol and mask mandates since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
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For some like Kurt Jang, who was partying with his friends at a club metres away from the alley, the trauma lives on.
"We saw people lying on the road. We started searching social media to find out what was going on. We were shocked. We hurried back to our homes. It was traumatic," Mr. Jang, who is in his late 20s, told PTI.
That his flat is in front of Soon Chun Hyang Hospital, the nearest medical facility to the accident site, added to his distress.
"I could see people constantly being lifted out of the ambulances. The sirens kept ringing all night. My family called me in the morning worried sick. They had also assumed that I was one of them," he said.
"I don't have enough words to express what all went on that night. The wounds are too fresh.”
The sounds you hear almost 10 days later underscore the tragedy — the stern voices of police personnel asking people to keep moving so others can pay their last tributes, hushed tones of local reporters as they set up equipment for a live broadcast and the chanting of Buddhist monks sitting near the memorial to comfort the dead.
According to Korean media reports, the government is in the line of fire after revelations that several bystanders around the accident site had tried alerting the police about a potential crowd surge hours before the incident but the forces did little to defuse the situation.
Banners asking the government, led by South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol, to "take up responsibility" for the tragedy can be seen in various parts of the city.
Investigation is underway to ascertain the cause of the crush.
Korean drama fans who dream of one day going to South Korea would know this neighbourhood from the 2019 popular show "Itaewon Class" starring popular actors Park Seo-jun and Kim Da-mi.
Today, however, that Itaewon is a world away.
Life, as Mr. Jang put it, will return to Itaewon but not anytime soon.
"We need two-three months, maybe more. There are many people who are still grieving," is how Mr. Jang put it.
