Flowers and a card with a message in English and German are placed at a memorial in front of Itaewon Station, Tuesday. Yonhap

Hate speeches, finger-pointing surge online

By Lee Yeon-woo

While the government has called for a national period of mourning until Nov. 5 over the massive crowd crush that killed 156 and injured 152 in Itaewon over the weekend, many are trying to find the cause of the tragedy, in order to hold those responsible to account.

Starting from Saturday night, some survivors and witnesses who were at the scene shared their experiences online. What dominated social media was discussion about a man who had been wearing a black headband with rabbit ears.

One individual who wrote online that he had barely managed to escape from the alley where the crush occurred, said that a man in his 20s and his friends had deliberately pushed the crowd, which was stuck in a narrow alley of the Hamilton Hotel, saying that what they did had caused a tragic domino effect on others, ultimately resulting in the crowd crush. The user described that man as wearing a headband with rabbit ears and that his hair had been parted down the middle.

Other netizens joined the search for the man, scrolling every video and photo uploaded on social media. One managed to lock in on the man and shared an image of his face online. Many pointed to him as "the main culprit" and asked him to turn himself in to the police. Meanwhile, images of his face continued to be circulated online.

The man responded with explanations on Instagram Tuesday, denying the allegations. "My friends and I are the victims of a witch hunt. It's true that I visited Itaewon that day, but we had already left Itaewon at that time," the man said.

He showed a receipt of a subway ticket he purchased on Saturday as evidence to back his claim that he is innocent. According to his screenshot from a banking app, he took the subway at Itaewon Station at 9:55 p.m. and got off at Hapjeong Station at 10:17 p.m. It is known that the first emergency calls concerning the crowd crush came in at 10:15 p.m.

"Stop the witch-hunting," the aggrieved man said.

Two people hug each other after paying tribute to those who passed away in the Itaewon crowd crush at the collective memorial altar located outside of Noksapyeong Station, Tuesday. Yonhap

"Testimony and comments from people at the scene can be very subjective. They talk about various things they believe to be true," Kim Un-kyung, head of the Mungcle Institute, which studies media and human rights issues, said in a recent media interview.

"It can cause dangerous negative side effects if these statements from the scene are broadcast without being cross-checked and their content confirmed," she stressed. "In particular, this case is a social disaster and the responsibility for it cannot be shifted onto one individual, as doing so would distort the substance of the incident," she added.

The instance of the man with the black headband is not the only case in which netizens looking for answers to the cause of the tragedy, ended up feeding rumors. When the crowd crush was first reported, some said that the crowd had been moving to see a social media influencer who had visited a location nearby, and others said that people had died due to ingesting candy containing drugs that had been circulated, although the police received no reports of drug use related to the incident.

Those in the political circle have also begun searching for the causes of the tragedy in order to examine whether and how it could have been prevented. The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) created a task force called the Itaewon Yongsan Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters, at the first meeting of which, Rep. Oh Young-hwan said, "We will find out the truth about the social disaster, analyze the cause, and come up with measures to prevent recurrence."

Nam Young-hee, vice chief of the DPK's in-house think tank, the Institute for Democracy, criticized President Yoon Suk-yeol's decision to relocate of the presidential office and residence from Cheongwadae to Yongsan District as a cause of the Itaewon disaster. She said Sunday that the Yongsan District police station had no workforce to assign to Itaewon because 700 police have been assigned to guard President Yoon's commute route.

"President Yoon failed to protect people who were simply trying to enjoy the festival. Take all responsibility for this case and step down," Nam wrote on Facebook. She later deleted the post.

In response, Rep. Joo Ho-young, the floor leader from People Power's Party, said Tuesday that "spreading fake news doesn't help fix this tragic incident," but only arouses "hate and conflict."

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo also asked the public to refrain from sharing "hate comments about the victims and the deceased, misinformation and harrowing scenes from the incident" on social media, Monday.

"The government will thoroughly investigate the cause of this accident and do its best to improve the necessary systems to prevent such an unfortunate accident from repeating itself," he said.