45 Minutes After the Accident, Sangmin Lee Assessed the Situation... Chaos in Command and Reporting System

Disaster Chief Minister of the Ministry of the Interior Received Report 19 Minutes Later Than President
Lee Sang-min Avoids Direct Answer Saying "Focusing on Accident Recovery is Priority"
No Response to Question About Resignation Intentions to President
Minister Lee Missing from Ministry of the Interior's Emergency Text Recipients
Police Chief Received Report 1 Hour 13 Minutes Later Than Interior Minister
Chaos in Command System Between Ministry of the Interior and Police Revealed During Disaster

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The head of the disaster control tower, Minister of the Interior and Safety Lee Sang-min, became aware of the Itaewon tragedy 65 minutes after the initial report was made, and 19 minutes later than when the President was informed. At a critical moment when citizens were fighting for their lives, the government's disaster system was essentially useless.

According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety on the 3rd, Minister Lee first became aware of the accident on the day of the tragedy, the 29th of last month, at 11:20 PM when he received an emergency message (CrossShot) from the Ministry’s Central Disaster and Safety Situation Room via a secretary office staff member. There was no report through the police. Even at 10:15 PM, when the first report was received by the fire department, at 10:48 PM when the Fire Agency Situation Room reported Level 1 fire response to the Ministry’s Situation Room according to the disaster safety reporting system, and at 10:57 PM when the Ministry’s Situation Room sent a Level 1 emergency message internally to officials, Minister Lee was unaware of the Itaewon tragedy situation. He only grasped the situation at 11:20 PM when Level 2 fire response was issued. This was 19 minutes later than the time President Yoon became aware of the incident at 11:01 PM. The time Minister Lee became aware of the incident was the same as when Mayor Oh Se-hoon, who was in the Netherlands, was informed.

When asked by reporters on his way to the Government Seoul Office that day why he received the report later than the Presidential Office, Minister Lee avoided a direct answer. He said, "Right now, rather than focusing on that, the urgent task is to devote ourselves to managing the aftermath of the accident, mourning the deceased, comforting the bereaved families, and helping those hospitalized to recover quickly." He added, "We will first manage the accident and prepare measures to prevent recurrence, and then sequentially examine the causes of the accident and any shortcomings." Amid growing calls for his dismissal due to delayed response causing increased casualties, Minister Lee did not respond to reporters’ questions about whether he had expressed his intention to resign to the President.

It is increasingly confirmed that this tragedy was a total failure of the disaster system. Minister Lee was even excluded for a time from the recipients of the Ministry’s Central Disaster and Safety Situation Room emergency message system. The Ministry initially stated that Minister Lee received the emergency message at 11:19 PM but later corrected this, saying, "Minister Lee first received the emergency message sent at 11:19 PM at 11:20 PM through a secretary office staff member and became aware of the accident." Minister Lee then received a situation report related to the Itaewon accident from the head of the Ministry’s Central Disaster and Safety Situation Room at 11:31 PM.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety, which oversees the police, did not receive any report related to the accident from the police, nor was there a system to relay such information to the police. Even as casualties increased, the command system of the control tower overseeing disaster and safety did not function properly for about an hour. Moreover, Police Commissioner Yoon Hee-geun only received a report at 12:14 PM on the 30th, two hours after the tragedy occurred, which was 1 hour and 13 minutes later than Minister Lee.

Minister Lee visited the accident site about 1 hour and 25 minutes after first becoming aware of the tragedy. He stayed at the site for 45 minutes and attended an emergency countermeasure meeting chaired by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo at the Government Seoul Office at 1:50 AM on the 30th, then moved to an emergency countermeasure meeting chaired by the President at 2:30 AM. At 10 AM, he attended the first meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters chaired by the President.

It took 33 minutes for the report to reach the Ministry’s Situation Room after the fire department received the initial report. At a Central Disaster and Safety Headquarters briefing, Park Jong-hyun, the Ministry’s Social Disaster Response Policy Officer, said about actions taken before the Situation Room received the report, "There is nothing I can respond to." Earlier, reports received by the police from 6:34 PM were also not immediately forwarded to the Ministry. Park said, "The police first received calls from citizens in Itaewon, but those were probably not immediately reported to the Ministry." Hwang Chang-seon, the Police Agency’s Security Situation Manager, said, "It is true that 112 (emergency calls) increased due to the event period," but could not explain why the reports were not immediately forwarded to the Ministry.

There are also increasing calls to review the reports received by the fire department before the tragedy occurred. Lee Il, Director of the Fire Agency’s Response Bureau, said, "Before 10:15 AM, seven reports were received from the Itaewon area, but they were general emergency situations involving intoxicated persons around the event venue," and added, "We are continuing to verify this." Regarding plans to release the 119 call recordings, he said, "They are not released immediately upon request but shared according to procedures."

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