A South Korean court has convicted three former police officers of destroying internal files and other evidence in an attempted cover-up after a Halloween crowd crush that killed nearly 160 people.
The tragedy happened in Itaewon, the popular nightlife area of Seoul, on October 29, 2022.
Tens of thousands of people - mostly in their teens or 20s - are believed to have gathered in Itaewon for festivities, that quickly developed into one of South Korea’s worst disasters in years as dozens of people were crushed.
Witnesses said the streets were so densely clogged with people and slow-moving vehicles that it was practically impossible for emergency workers and ambulances to reach the scene of the crush.
A total of 159 people lost their lives. The high death toll has been largely blamed on official failures in disaster planning and a botched emergency response.
More than 20 government and police officials have been indicted over the crowd crush, but the three police officers convicted on Wednesday marked the first convictions over the deaths.
The Seoul Western District Court sentenced Park Seong-min, a former senior intelligence officer at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, to 18 months in prison on charges that he ordered subordinates to erase internal documents after the crush.
Those included reports showing how police ignored warnings about possible crowd-related accidents in the nightlife district of Itaewon.
Kim Jin-ho, a former intelligence officer at Seoul's Yongsan district police station, received a suspended one-year sentence on similar charges.
Kwang Yeong-seok, a lower-ranking officer at the Yongsan station, received a four-month deferred sentence after being found guilty of destroying files under Kim's instruction.
A civic group representing victims' families issued a statement welcoming the ruling, which they said recognised "criminal liability of public officials for failing to anticipate and prepare for the huge crowd leading up to the tragedy, and for covering up and downplaying information about the tragedy after it happened".
The group also criticised South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for vetoing last month a bill passed by the opposition-controlled parliament to appoint a special investigator to lead an independent investigation into the accident.
Following a 74-day investigation into the crowd crush, a special investigation team led by the National Police Agency concluded police and municipal officials in Yongsan district failed to plan effective crowd control measures despite anticipating huge crowds.
Despite anticipating a crowd of more than 100,000, Seoul police assigned 137 officers to Itaewon on the day of the crush.
Police also ignored hotline calls placed by pedestrians who warned of swelling crowds before the surge turned deadly.
Officials also botched their response before people began getting crushed in an alley near Hamilton Hotel, and failed to establish control over the site and allow paramedics to reach the injured in time.
Some experts have called the crush a "man-made disaster" that could have been prevented with fairly simple steps such as employing more police and public workers to monitor bottleneck points, enforcing one-way walk lanes and blocking narrow pathways.
