Daio Ikeda and his twin brother, Kigen, felt uneasy about the huge number of people riding the subway in Seoul on Oct. 29.

Their concerns turned into terror and horror after they emerged from Itaewon Station, tried to move through the masses of people, and then heard people screaming for help.

Daio, who is from Kyushu in southern Japan, and Kigen were taking part in the Halloween festivities in the popular nightlife district of Itaewon.

Around 9:15 p.m., most of the passengers on their subway car got off at Itaewon Station.

Like the train, the station building was jam-packed, and it took the brothers, who are in their 20s, around 15 minutes just to reach ground level.

When they finally got outside of the station, they saw an endless sea of people crowded together.

“This is terrifying. Maybe we should go back,” Daio recalled telling his brother.

But they decided to head north from the station. After around 30 minutes, they reached a thoroughfare lined with restaurants and clubs.

“I looked around and could not find any security guards or personnel controlling the traffic,” Daio said.

Most of the people were moving from east to west, creating an almost one-way traffic of pedestrians. But the flow eventually came to a stop.

Some in the crowd decided to head in the opposite direction to avoid the gridlock. However, that only seemed to exacerbate the chaos.

People jostled for position and started to shove each other.

The brothers said they tried to enter a drinking establishment to flee the danger. They gave up on the idea when they were told that they would have to buy an expensive bottle of alcohol to enter.

They heard cries ring out and initially thought they were celebratory shouts from revelers.

They then saw the tense looks on the faces of people being squeezed. Some in the crowd were desperately trying to climb up walls to escape the crush.

The brothers said they were dozens of meters from the alley where the deadly stampede occurred. At their location, short people in the crowd were being pushed to the ground, while tall people were lifted into the air by the squeeze.

Daio, who is 174 centimeters tall and was wearing platform shoes, said he could not touch the ground. He struggled to find enough space to turn around.

A T-intersection near the alley was flooded with people coming from three directions.

Daio and Kigen, feeling their lives were in serious danger, finally managed to leave the thoroughfare around 10 p.m.

After they had reached safety, they heard ambulances roaring by.

LIKE A REPORT ON WAR

A Japanese woman who was staying in South Korea on a working holiday said she left a club located at the center of the T-intersection around 10:40 p.m.

All she heard were ambulance sirens, alarm whistles, loud music from the club and screams in the crowd.

She said she saw around 15 people collapsed on the street with no emergency workers around. Some people were desperately trying to resuscitate the victims.

“It was just like watching a news video reporting on war,” she said.

JOY TURNS TO HORROR

Natsu Sugioka, a 24-year-old Japanese interpreter in Seoul, said she saw ambulances blaring their sirens that were blocked by the crowd and other vehicles around 10:30 p.m.

When she finally reached the scene of the deadly stampede, she saw victims lying on the ground.

Some were being given heart massages by emergency workers. Others were being carried away on stretchers.

Just two hours previously, Sugioka passed by the site and saw people dancing and playing music on the street.

She thought that those people may have lost their lives in the tragedy, and she could not stop her tears. She left the area five minutes later.

“I could have been one of the victims if I had come here at a different time,” she said. “I do not feel like returning to Itaewon.”

‘GO BACK’

A Japanese company employee in his 50s who works in Seoul live-streamed footage of the crowds packing Itaewon on the night of Oct. 29.

After 9 p.m., the thoroughfare was packed like a morning rush hour.

In the man’s footage, a person believed to be a U.S. citizen can be heard shouting, “Go back,” against the sounds of women crying out.

The company employee also felt in danger and left Itaewon about 15 minutes before the tragedy unfolded.

The Itaewon district has become a popular destination for Halloween festivities among young people in South Korea and overseas.

“People had not been allowed to converge due to movement restrictions since the coronavirus pandemic began,” the company employee said. “This was the first Halloween in three years that they could celebrate in large numbers. That is why so many revelers must have gathered.”

(This article was written by Gakushi Fujiwara, Shin Kasahara and Takashi Endo.)