South Korea’s National Police Agency on Wednesday raided local police departments in the capital, Seoul, and the city’s Yongsan district office as it investigates whether official ineptitude contributed to a deadly crowd surge that killed 156 people in the neighborhood of Itaewon.
The raids came a day after the national agency acknowledged that Seoul police failed to act for hours despite receiving at least 11 emergency calls from pedestrians warning about a swelling crowd of Halloween revelers getting out of control ahead of the crush on Saturday in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel.
