From the scrutiny of first lady Kim Keon-hee’s doctoral dissertation to the furor over President Yoon Suk-yeol’s ‘Biden’ remarks and the human tragedy of the Itaewon disaster [on Oct. 29], no proper explanations or apologies have been given for anything, and this behavior of making mistakes and refusing to correct them has left the South Korean public trembling with anxiety.
"Why do you people blame the government for the whole thing when it was your responsibility to keep your grown-up children from going (there)?" Kim wrote on Facebook, Sunday. "Have your children been conscripted by the state from birth? Since when did the president of the free Republic of Korea become the 'supreme paternal leader' (who must take care of all members of the public)?" - 김성회, Multicultural MinistryWhat a cracker of a quote. "What, is the government responsible for public order?"Yes? You f-ing dunce. "Wait, really?"
You can't have public order of a relatively free state without the public being on board, and this is not a general public that prioritizes safety over cutting corners. Anyone in rush hour traffic on the subway the Monday after the Halloween incident? Crowds were unruly and rushed as always, giving no thought to not cramming on onto an already packed subway car. The only difference was that the old Korean guys magically appeared in hi-vis vests and midget light sabres. The ones with their supreme confidence in their authority over all people younger than them. Lots of hand-wringing and calls for public accountability after the Sewol disaster also, but what really changed? This is still a pretty selfish culture. Go, Go, go, me, me, me. They don't want an autocratic, authoritarian state but they want government alone to be responsible for keeping everyone safe? Not going to happen.
I don't think the gov could reasonably have entirely prevented this, or an event similar to this in the future, without making a lot of people unhappy. On the other hand, there was clearly a level of negligence involved when it came to the lack of appropriate response to the phone calls as well.
but bad decisions or lack of attention by the other two groups also were contributing factors.
This. It's all well and good for us to wag fingers, but say the government had come down hard and made it a pain to get into Itaewon, what would have been our reaction? Maybe if done really delicately or with a minimal(ly effective) footprint we would have been fine. But what if they had done serious measures like electronically monitored the number of people and turned people away and so on? At the very least people would have been upset at them being heavy-handed. Quite probably people would have screamed "racism". It's a bit hard to criticize the authorities for not doing enough if we would have criticized the authorities if they did enough.
And yes, I know some will criticize this as absolving the authorities and trying to shift blame, or apologizing, or blaming the victims and that no, they really would have supported tons of intrusive measures and not been upset.
The above is harsh, and not the ideal way, but it is something that needs to be addressed and if we just work ourselves into thinking we had all the answers and boo those awful people in charge,
I completely agree with the government having messed up that evening and trying to sweep it under the carpet. But, it seems to me that happened with the Sewol and all of society should've had some kind of serious rethink after that preventable atrocity. Yet, across the board we didn't see that. If the only time you hold the government accountable is when something happens, you know it's reactive when this country needs some real proactive moves. I bet the subway guys telling people to wait for the next cars will be gone by late spring and no one will complain.
they are also irrelevant. people wanting to party and store owners wanting to do business don't have the capability to be 100% aware of a situation of that magnitude, which is why the authorities (you know, the people with the traffic helicopters and shit) need to moniter any situation that has the potential to turn into a safety hazard.
its quite easy to criticize them for not doing enough regardless, actually. there were quite a few right-wing yahoos bitching and moaning to no end about mask mandates, but we didn't throw every covid regulation out the window over that.also lol @ the "probably quite a few people would have screamed "racism" bit. i do not believe for a single second that the government of south korea gives two shits about whatever hangook is typing on waygook dot org (nor should they)
you can choose to think i'm lying to win an argument if you want, but i didn't bitch and moan about any of the covid restrictions and i certainly wouldn't bitch and moan about not being allowed to enter an overcrowded street.
public safety is primarily the responsibility of those "awful people in charge", or if not what exactly do we have a government for?
This is the Korean people's response to safety in a nutshell: "Someone else will watch me and take care of my lack of safety" but when you have most of the population with the same mindset; it turns out, nobody is looking after anyone. So, it becomes "Well, Government...."
Then you get Koreans and gyopos who insist that the police and government aren't allowed to do anything because South Korea used to be a dictatorship, which is a pretty bad excuse for deadly irresponsibility.
Good safety culture holds EVERYONE accountable.
I think a society that puts the primary focus for safety on the government is not creating the best safety culture.
How do you expect people who are elected or join the government to have a true understanding of safety if their whole life they've just been expecting the government to take care of it for them? Wouldn't you instead want to make safety the responsibility of everyone, top to bottom, so that when people do get elevated to positions of greater responsibility, they have that base?
Focusing the blame only on the dozen or so people in government and authority with decision-making power while ignoring the other 150,000 individuals involved will only ensure that these conditions will arise in the future.
That base of responsibility and understanding that they have control over the situation will not be developed and will not exist in any strong form when they take over.
At this density, a crowd can start to act like fluid, sweeping individuals around without their volition. Such incidents are invariably the product of failures of organizations, and most major crowd disasters can be prevented by simple crowd management strategies.[1] Such incidents can occur at large gatherings such as sporting, commercial, social, and religious events. The critical factor is crowd density rather than crowd size.[2]
i'm pretty sure that people have some semblance of an idea of what safety is, or else there would be half a million accidental deaths daily (random number for emphasis, don't nitpick it if you get the point, please).
an event at the scale of itaewon is something beyond any one person's control. it is a public event taking place in the city streets. when there's a big crowd, or a traffic jam, or whatever on the streets, the government is the one that clears it out, for obvious reasons. if it was a private or sponsored event, i would also lay some of the blame on the organization hosting or sponsoring it.
the thing you seem to be missing here is that no one person did, or could have, control over that situation. its a situation that requires people with training or resources to come in and manage the crowd.
The numbers are scientific papers. The quote itself is from Wikipedia. But no, you're smarter than PhDs who study crowd movement for decades. Sure. If you wanna put 3% of the blame on revellers, go for it. But it's so bloody insignificant. It's like blaming someone who dies in a collapsing shopping mall for not researching the construction company who built the mall.
