The growing death toll. Images and videos from social networks of chaos and suffering. Endless news coverage. Thousands of witnesses and emergency personnel, and countless more who have heard their stories and grieved with them. The collective psychological trauma for South Korea is just beginning.
Korean government and medical officials are warning about trauma, urging people to be careful when consuming information and seeking mental health care and support. But mental illness and psychiatry are still taboos in this country, which will likely present barriers to the healing process.
Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have been in Itaewon on Saturday, the night partygoers were trapped in a crowd in a narrow alley. Survivors recalled the horrors of what they experienced and saw that night, and said they worry about the effects of those traumatic memories later.
Juliana Velandia Santaella, 23, recalled feeling squeezed by the packed crowd, slowly pushing hundreds down the alley, and feeling the weight of other people’s bodies crushing her.
“I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to be next.’ I really thought I was going to die,” said the medical student from Mexico. “I was completely paralyzed. At some point, he couldn’t feel my legs. He couldn’t even wiggle his toes.”
“I am really worried about PTSD,” Velandia said. “I suffer from depression and anxiety.”
The Korea Neuropsychiatric Association issued a statement on Sunday warning people of the tragedy’s lasting damage to grieving families and friends; the wounded and their loved ones; the witnesses; and the medical and emergency personnel who responded. The association said the incident has triggered a need for large-scale mental health support.
The government has started to offer some resources. The South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare created a support group for a limited number of people affected by the disaster, offering psychological support to some 1,000 relatives, witnesses and survivors.
But the need for healing will be much greater. In the days immediately following the tragedy, friends and family shared their memories privately. His expressions of pain and trauma were also spilled out publicly.
At a community center in Hannam, an area neighboring the crash site, concerned family and friends had gathered looking for information on missing persons. As they searched the missing people, they waited and wandered around the center with somber expressions. Around lunchtime on Sunday, family after family received word that the people they were looking for were among the dead.
Most left the center in tears and screams, running towards cars or the subway station, or simply running away while they processed the news. An old man stopped to speak, while his wife and a young woman ran ahead of him, speechless and trembling with emotion.
“We called and then came from a town far from here hoping to find them injured in a hospital,” he said of his missing relative. “But they were found as one body.”
Another woman ran out of the center and got into a car. She paused before entering, facing reporters with tears in her eyes, but she couldn’t get a word out. At the center, her colleague, an official from the presidential office, explained that she was also an employee of the presidential office who had worked through the night helping families search for her loved ones. While she was working, she learned that a relative was one of the missing. She then received word that the relative, a minor high school student, was one of the dead.
Yoon-sung Park, a 24-year-old tech worker from Texas, was one of the people who helped the victims on Saturday. He led the people to clearer ground, where they could lie down for medical treatment.
“There were people lying down here, about half a mile,” he said, pointing toward Itaewon’s main street. “There were so many bodies on the ground.”
On Saturday night, Park and his friend had attended the Atelier club at the top of the alley as part of their month-long vacation in South Korea.
Sitting with a bottle of water at a cafe near the scene, Park appeared to be in shock.
“If we had stayed there, we could have died,” he said.
