With snake alleys of bars lining “Hooker Hill” and indicators like “BADASS” round native landmark Hamilton Hotel, Seoul’s Itaewon district was a logo of freewheeling nightlife within the South Korean capital for many years earlier than tragedy struck.
Saturday night time’s crush of party-goers, which killed 153 largely younger individuals, might hinder the revival of an space that started to flourish after greater than two years of COVID-19 restrictions, as fashionable eating places And retailers had changed seedy institutions.
Lee Sang-eun, who runs a pub on the street subsequent to Hamilton, mentioned it may very well be a devastating blow to even those that have tailored to the change.
“It happened right when we were about to rebound after the pandemic hit,” mentioned Lee, who has operated Itawan companies for 3 many years. “We could have avoided the pandemic as we owned the place, but most of our neighbors who were paying rent here closed their business and left.”
A brief stroll from the Yongsan US Army Garrison, Itaewon emerged as a base for American troopers after the 1950–53 Korean War, with bars, brothels and style retailers operating via either side of the principle part.
Itawan went via many years of ups and downs.
In the late Nineties a mysterious homicide known as the “Itawon Murder” and different crimes painted a darkish picture of the world. But at the start of this century it turned an fascinating place and place to expertise world cultures with no passport.
The district has been a recurrent theme in common tradition, most not too long ago with the hit drama “Itawan Class” and the Ok-pop track “Itawan Freedom”.
Sanctions imposed on US troops after the September 11, 2001, assaults on the United States prompted a shift to native clients, immediate change by celebrities opening eating places that turned common with younger South Koreans Gone.
Before 9/11, “Itawan was full of Americans,” reminds a 40-year-old resident promoting flowers on the road. The roads had been getting packed once more for the primary time for the reason that pandemic, mentioned the lady, who requested to not be named.
“Before COVID, more foreigners than locals, and now a lot of locals come from rural areas,” she mentioned. “I can not consider this tragedy really occurred. Holiday or, what’s it known as, Halloween?
Early within the coronavirus pandemic, some homosexual bars and transgender golf equipment in Itawan turned a lightweight rod for controversy, with dozens of circumstances tracing individuals who had been blamed for not telling well being officers that they hung out there. was.
Park Geun-ho, proprietor of Havana Lounge & Pub, frightened that the catastrophe might show to be extra of a problem than something seen within the space.
“After all this, will people come to Etawah now? They will not,” mentioned Park, who has run the enterprise within the district for almost 30 years.
Before the catastrophe struck, Halloween festivities had been a serious attraction for years, attracting locals and foreigners to the foothills of the Namsan Mountains, together with the late Samsung Group chairman, just some of the posh villas occupied by international diplomats and heads of the Chabol Business Syndicate. steps away. ,
But questions have risen in recent times in regards to the security of internet hosting an occasion that attracts as much as 100,000 on slim and mountainous roads, particularly with the principle highway closed to site visitors to accommodate pop-up shops and kiosks. with out doing
“This month should have been good with the Global Village Festival, Halloween, etc., but then it crashed,” mentioned Kim Kyung-mo, who works at a comfort retailer close to the road the place the crush occurred.
“I met and briefly talked to my boss earlier today, and he clearly wasn’t feeling really well.”
With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
