When Kim Kap Soo watched live broadcasts of the harrowing Halloween party crush that killed more than 150 people in Seoul last weekend, there was shock and sadness — but also the embarrassed realization that this wasn't the first time he'd seen South Korea suffer a devastating disaster as a result of official incompetence and safety failures.
“My heart is aching very much. We are among the world’s 10 largest economies, and I totally don’t understand how this can happen in our nation,” said Kim, 73, a retired environmental engineering researcher. “Our public insensitivity to safety is too severe. We should always be careful about everything, but we don’t do so, and I think that’s the biggest problem.”
