South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee attended a Buddhist ceremony Friday to remember the victims of a stampede at a Halloween party in Seoul’s Itaewon district that killed 156 people.
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 friends of the victims.
The president laid a bouquet of chrysanthemums on an altar and expressed his regrets. «As president, I am responsible for the welfare and safety of the people, and I feel terrible,» he said, according to Yonhap news agency.
«I am aware, as grief and sorrow deepen in everyone, that I and the government have a responsibility to address this to prevent similar tragedies in the future,» he said, before vowing that «something like this will not happen again.»
In this sense, he affirmed that the authorities «will support the families of the victims and the injured, to whom he will pay special attention».
His words come shortly after the police chief, Yoon Hee Keun, warned that he was not informed of the stampede that occurred last Saturday night until he woke up in the morning.
He explained that he was visiting the city of Jecheon when the tragedy occurred and that he went to bed around 23.00 (local time) without having received any report of the incident.
However, 45 minutes earlier there had already been reports of deaths from the stampede, but he was not notified about it. The first message about the stampede was sent to him at 23.32 (local time) but he did not read it until the following day.
The country’s president received his first report on the accident at around 11 p.m., although Interior Minister Lee Sang Min, who oversees the police work, was not informed of the incident until 20 minutes after Yoon was alerted.
