A year on from deadly crowd crush in Itaewon, a mother’s grief deepens

Unspoken pain: Cho (centre) and her husband Lee, whose son Ji-han was killed during the Halloween crowd crush in Itaewon on Oct 29 last year, crying as they stand with their daughter Ga-young in front of a cabinet containing the ossuary for Ji-han’s remains during a remembrance ceremony at a charnel house in Goyang on the first anniversary of his death. — AFP

A year after losing her son in a deadly crush that killed nearly 160 people in Seoul, Cho Mi-eun feels her sadness and anger at the tragedy have only deepened, exacerbated by a lack of answers as to what went wrong that night.

Last year, Cho’s 24-year-old son Lee Ji-han was among the tens of thousands of people – most of them in their 20s and 30s – who were out to enjoy post-pandemic Halloween celebrations in the South Korean capital’s Itaewon district on Oct 29.