Seoul's entertainment and shopping district of Itaewon is gradually recovering a year after a deadly Halloween stampede brought business to a standstill.
The revenues of businesses in the area have recovered to 70 to 80 percent of levels seen before the tragedy as tourists and young people return. But many stores have been vacant since the stampede that killed 156 people.
According to Korea Credit Data, which helps small businesses manage their finances, the sales of 225 restaurants in Itaewon stand at 70 percent of levels a year ago. Last November their sales plummeted 33 percent.
A bar owner there said, "I couldn't pay the rent because we had no customers after the tragedy, but revenues started to rise again around April and May when the weather got warmer."
And the owner of a clothes boutique said, "Customers stopped coming here for almost half a year after the tragedy and I had a tough time paying the W5 million rent. But since the summer, there has been a noticeable increase in tourists from Japan and Vietnam as well as customers in their 20s (US$1=W1,356)."
But Halloween festivities were muted this year. "I put my store up for sale in January because I was unable to sell anything, but there were no takers," the owner of a novelty shop said. "People have started returning to Itaewon, but I don't expect things to improve too much."
According to the Korea Real Estate Board, store vacancies in Itaewon almost tripled from 4.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2022 to 11.4 percent in the first quarter of this year. Although they fell to 8.3 percent during the third quarter, the rate is still twice as high as before the tragedy.
Meanwhile, police officers, firefighters and safety personnel were deployed to patrol the Itaewon neighborhood, directing pedestrian traffic and ensuring safety. Last year illegally parked cars prevented ambulances from getting through to victims of the stampede.
The crowd that gathered for early Halloween celebrations last Saturday still numbered an estimated 14,000, but that was a decrease of about 40,000 from last year.
Instead, the areas around Seoul's Gangnam Station and Seongsu-dong saw bigger crowds than last year. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, numbers in the Gangnam Station area were up from 47,800 last year to 52,000. A 24-year-old visitor from Bundang, Gyeonggi Province said, "I used to go to Itaewon often for Halloween, but this year I was told not to."
Newly trendy Seongsu-dong also saw an increase of around 10,000 people to over 18,000 visitors, and in the nearby Konkuk University area the crowd increased by over 5,000 to 30,000.
Some 90,000 revelers converged on the Hongik University area over the weekend, but police and local authorities were prepared and the festivities passed without incident.
But Moon Hyun-cheol at Honam University warned, "The capital region is always exposed to the risk of overcrowding. Since the government cannot always control all the areas, citizens should comply with basic rules to prevent incidents like the Halloween tragedy."
