[Opinion] A Time to Pray for Rest, Not Hate

The Moral Superiority Questioning "Why Did You Go There?" Is a Dangerous Mindset
I Want to Remember Only the Ordinary Citizens Who Tried to Save Lives

[Asia Economy] I spent the entire weekend watching news about the Itaewon accident. While doing so, I imagined what it would have been like if I, or someone I love, had been there. I have never been to the Halloween festival, but I have always wanted to go someday, and I have been in crowded places several times. The back alley of the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon is a place I often visited when I was working as a designated driver and writing the book "Daeri Society." I walked through that alley toward someone waiting for me.

That sloping alley is a place you must pass through to get home by subway or bus. After walking just a few dozen meters, you reach the subway station and bus stop. It was a path I would have had to walk to get home as well.

If I had been there, I would have been frustrated by the immobile people and the situation, and I would have had no idea that my attempt to move forward was causing someone’s death. The cries of "Don’t push" were surely drowned out by the loud music. Even if I had been outside, it would have been the same. Seeing the lined-up ambulances, I might have thought someone had been drinking and fighting and not paid much attention. At a festival, what you do is drink and sing, so I would have done the same.

There is actually very little an ordinary individual in the crowd can do. Accurate information about the situation is blocked. Almost no one at the scene could have properly understood what was happening.

People who say it would have been different if they had been there are invoking the morality of everyone who was there. They ask why people pushed, why they drank, danced, and sang, or why they even went there in the first place. But there is no more dangerous feeling than such moral superiority. One must not hate others recklessly based on just a fragment of a video.

And what crime is there in going out to have fun? I also go to amusement parks with my children, to baseball stadiums with friends, and even to crowded campsites during holidays.

I just want to remember only the image of those who, after realizing the situation, ran to save people. There were people who reached out to those entangled in the crowd, shop owners who opened their doors to let people in. Above all, not only rescue workers but dozens of ordinary citizens performed CPR to save lives. I served in the military as a member of the mandatory fire brigade and spent a long time with the base’s ambulance team, so I have often seen such scenes. In fact, I have rarely seen anyone survive after receiving CPR. But both paramedics and emergency room doctors do it desperately. I did too. It might be the heart that anyone who is human has?the desire to save a single life.

A few days later, I received a call saying that a lecture for education officials in Chungcheong Province would likely be postponed. I also got calls from the schools and kindergartens of my children living in Gangneung, checking on their well-being. It seems there were not many teenage deaths, and the likelihood that they were youths from Chungcheong or Gangwon provinces is extremely low. But there were people who did their duty with that kind of heart. I was very grateful for those words checking on the children’s safety.

The hearts of those who performed CPR for the first time in their lives to save strangers they did not even know are no different from that heart. Thanks to this kind system and the people who wholeheartedly carry it out, our society will continue to move forward tomorrow. What we must do is not easy hatred and ridicule but pray for their souls?that is all I believe. I pray for the souls of all those who died in this tragedy.

Writer Kim Minseop

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.