Soul
CNN
—
“She’s smiling, look at her smile, look at her face.” His wife whispered as he took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.
Oji-min, 25, was one of 158 people killed after a crowd was crushed during a Halloween celebration in Seoul’s Itaewon nightlife district on October 29.
Her parents have the unimaginable task of piecing together her final moments from selfies and cell phone photos.
At 9:35 pm, Jimin is seen laughing in a bar. At 9:59 p.m., she sends a message to her friend telling her that she is going home. A few photos of her with her pals in fancy outfits follow, followed by her final photo of Jimin smiling with her friend Kim at 10:07 p.m.
Afterwards, the two headed for the subway and weaved their way through the masses.
“We weren’t going down that alley…we felt sucked in,” on Friday.
“I walked away from (Jimin) because two other men were walking between us. I was moved.”
Official sources are timing the fatal crash to begin at 10:15 p.m., just eight minutes after Jimin’s last selfie. All 158 deaths occurred in an alley about 4 meters (13 feet) wide where two young women were swept away. Many Korean youths and her 26 foreigners were killed, and 196 were injured. Kim was among them.
“Someone fell in front of me, and I fell,” Kim said. “The next thing I noticed was that I was lying on top of a foreign man, and people were piling up on top of me and other people. I was on the second layer of that pile. .
Hope was born when she saw the faces of paramedics in front of her. He tried to pull the woman out, but the pile of people screamed with every movement of her body.
“We were already under pressure, but when I tried to pull her, it hurt even more, so he had to stop,” Kim said.
A police officer who was present at the scene said that by the time he arrived, there were already piles of corpses in the alleyway.
“We couldn’t pull people out from under them. The pressure was too much. I think they were already dead,” said the officer, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation from senior officials.
“The second and third layers roared for help and disappeared, but we couldn’t pull them out.”
His description matched that of a first responder who told CNN, “I could see 10 rows of faces[but]I couldn’t even see their legs.”
Kim’s memories of her own rescue are hazy. “I was dragged out and lay on the ground for a while.
“I stayed in the hospital overnight and was discharged. I couldn’t walk until the next morning. I pinched my leg and didn’t feel anything.
Video study: How a night of celebration turns into disaster
Jimin’s mother, Kim Eun Mi, did not know that her daughter was in Itaewon. Jimin always came home early from her night out, so she started to worry.
“It was Saturday, so I went shopping with Jimin. After shopping, we had lunch together and she went out to see her friends. Then I said, ‘No, I went to see my friend’.”
Throughout the night, the family frantically called Jimin’s cell phone, the hospital, the police, and visited a nearby apartment in case she had already returned home.
At 1 p.m. the next day, the family received a call asking them to come to the hospital morgue and check on Jimin’s body.
Kim Eun Mi said, “It’s really devastating to identify your own child. Between sobs, her husband added:
The family visits Jimin every day at a memorial park near their home. Every night, Jimin’s parents visit her online chat room where families of people who have lost her loved ones in tragedy gather.
Kim Eun-mi said that talking to others who are in the same situation helps because they are the only ones who can understand each other’s pain.
In the house Jimin grew up in, sadness is clouded by unanswered questions and anger.
“The hardest and most frustrating thing is that no one is held accountable.
A council formed by the families of more than 97 victims of the clash has called for a formal apology from President Yoon Suk-yeol and the dismissal of the country’s security minister for failing to prevent the tragedy.
Yun offered his “condolence” to the bereaved family, but failed to apologize, saying that “particularly responsible people” should be held accountable.
In a speech on October 30, Minister of Security Lee Sang-min said the tragedy could not have been prevented by dispatching the police and fire brigade in advance.
A special investigation is underway within the National Police Agency, but an investigation into the Diet has yet to begin due to political infighting.
So far, two police officers have been dismissed and arrested. It was accused of destroying an internal report on the risks posed by large crowds gathering in Itaewon during the Halloween festival.
Former Yongsan-gu police chief Lee Im-jae is being investigated for professional negligence and forging official documents, while former emergency inspector Song Byeong-joo is being investigated for professional negligence.
A police officer who spoke to CNN said he was concerned about the direction of the investigation. He worries that we’re focusing too much on the mistakes we made after the tragedy, rather than the lack of advance safety planning.
A CNN reporter is back in Itaewon’s narrow alleys the day after the Halloween disaster.see what it looks like
“The problem now is that the people who should be really responsible aren’t. The investigation is going downwards, not upwards,” the officer said.
“We may have made a mistake trying to save one more life, but who would want to do this job if they were to blame us?”
Jimin’s parents said they haven’t heard anything from the government since their daughter’s funeral took place.
Politics is irrelevant to the investigation, they said. They want facts about where and how her daughter died, and answers to the harder question of why.
Staring at a box of birthday cards and a picture of a friend you took out of your daughter’s apartment, you’re going through a tragedy that shouldn’t change your life.
Kim Eun Mi said of her daughter, “She was so warm and cute. She was a very nice daughter to me, but she’s not with me anymore.”
Her voice trembles as the crying overtakes her again.
