A terrible accident occurred late last week in the South Korean city of Seongnam during a music festival at the Pangyo Techno Valley, which has sadly seen the death of 16 people, 11 injured as well as an assumed suicide of a safety controller working at the festival.
The tragic event took place on Friday 17 October as more than 700 live music fans viewed an outdoor K-Pop concert in the city just outside of Seoul. It has been said that up to 30 spectators were trying to catch a better glimpse of performing group 4Minute by standing on a ventilation grate that eventually collapsed, causing many to plummet nearly 20-metres down a concrete shaft, as The Telegraph reports.
Following from this, a safety controller working at the concert whose surname has been revealed as Oh, committed suicide the next day, jumped off a building not too far from the area where the tragedy took place.
A brief suicide note written by the 37-year old spoke, “I am sorry for the dead victims… Please take a good care of my children.” His body was recovered early Saturday morning, a few hours after he’d been questioned by police over the incident.
South Korean authorities are now investigating the scene to ensure safety regulations were met.
Disaster relief spokesman Kim Nam-Jun commented to press on Saturday stating, “A joint team of police and national forensic experts scoured the site this morning and closely inspected gratings and related structures.”
A police official continued, “If it turns out that safety regulations were ignored, we would bring criminal charges.”
While the world awaits the results of investigations, the popular K-Pop girl group 4minute who were performing on-stage at the time have released an official statement via Billboard concerning the incident, “we can’t express how regretful they are for what happened.”
“The performance wasn’t solely a 4Minute show, but a stage shared by many artists for an event. During their performance, none of the members or staff were aware of the accident and finished their complete set. It wasn’t until they arrived back in Seoul that they heard of the news regarding the accident. We hope the audience wasn’t hurt in this accident.”
Sadly, this isn’t the first instance of tragedy at a concert that has caused the loss of life.
Earlier this year lives were lost at Austin’s SXSW, not to mention the horror year of 2011 where European and US festivals saw stage collapses causing death. With Australia’s festival season coming into full-swing, we couldn’t encourage live music fans to enjoy their festivities in the safest way imaginable.
Footage of the scene can be viewed below, for support, phone Lifeline 13 11 14 or www.lifeline.org.au
