South Korea’s Interior Minister Lee Sang Min on Tuesday joined the list of public apologies for the human avalanche that claimed the lives of more than 150 people in Seoul last Saturday, assuming that the authorities bear «infinite responsibility» for such incidents.
«I apologize for the fact that this accident occurred despite the fact that the state has infinite responsibility for the safety of the population,» Lee said during a session in Parliament in which he bowed his head as a gesture of respect for the victims and their families.
The police work has been questioned, insofar as there was no capacity control in the Itaewon neighborhood, where the streets were crowded. Lee has vowed to work to prevent such tragedies from happening again, according to Yonhap news agency.
This is in addition to the commitments made publicly by the police and by the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, who on Tuesday acknowledged the need to improve surveillance in large crowds, for example through the use of new technologies such as drones.
Yoon, who has visited on several occasions the places where offerings have been placed in memory of the victims, called for «profound measures» instead of focusing «on whether the event had one organizer or another».
