The police chief was not notified of the tragedy until the following day.
Nov. 4 (EUROPA PRESS) –
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee attended a Buddhist ceremony in remembrance of the victims of the stampede that took place during a Halloween party in the Itaewon district of Seoul on Friday. and that resulted in 156 deaths.
The ceremony took place at the Jogye temple, in the capital of South Korea, and was attended by hundreds of Buddhist leaders and followers, as well as relatives and relatives of the victims.
The president has deposited a bouquet of chrysanthemums on an altar and has lamented what happened. “As president, I am responsible for the welfare and safety of the population, and I feel terribly bad,” he said, according to reports from the Yonhap news agency.
“I am aware, as sorrow and pain deepen everyone, that both I and the Government have a responsibility to address this to prevent similar tragedies in the future,” he maintained before promising that “it will not happen again something like that”.
In this regard, he stated that the authorities “will support the families of the victims and the injured, to whom they will pay special attention.”
His words come shortly after Police Chief Yoon Hee Keun warned that he was not informed of the stampede on Saturday night until he woke up in the morning.
Thus, he explained that he was visiting the city of Jecheon when the tragedy occurred and that he went to bed around 11:00 p.m. (local time) without having received any report about the incident.
However, 45 minutes earlier there had already been deaths due to the stampede, but he was not notified about it. The first message about the stampede was sent to him at 11:32 p.m. local time, but he didn’t read it until the next day.
For his part, the president of the country received his first report on the accident at around 11:00 p.m., although the Minister of the Interior, Lee Sang Min, who supervises the work of the Police, was not aware of what happened until the past twenty minutes. since Yoon was alerted.
