Background: The International Fireworks Festival happens every October in Seoul. They shoot off the fireworks at a big park on the river. This year four countries participated, Italy, USA, China and Korea. Each country puts on a 20 minute show with a 10 minute intermission in between. Sounds pretty awesome right? We thought so.
The Plan: We decided we would meet up with another teacher at the subway station close to home and take the subway to the park. We knew it would be very crazy busy but we have seen big crowds here so assumed it would be fine. We planned to find a spot to set out our mat and get some food to eat while we waited for the fireworks to start. We planned to sit through the first two countries shows and then make our way up close to the subway station where we would stand and watch the third country and part of the fourth country before trying to leave right before it ended to beat some of the crowd. This is no where close to what actually happened for us.
The Reality: Everything went fine before the show started. The subway was busy and it took a little bit to make our way up all the stairs and out because of the crowd but it was fine. We found ourselves a spot down in the park, got some chicken and waited for the show to start. There was a tree blocking part of our view of the fireworks (and the steady stream of people that kept walking by) but we still had a pretty great view of the show. We followed our plan and watched the first two shows then packed up our stuff and started to make our way back up to street level. Then the madness began. Thousands, maybe even millions, of people were at street level as well. Half of them walking towards the park, half of them walking away from the park. For a few minutes our group of three was able to stick together easily, no one was really pushing and everyone was walking just fine even in a big crowd. We got to the subway station but a police officer was not letting anyone in it either because they had closed it off or only a certain number of people were allowed in at a time. So we kept walking. By now we didn't have much choice in the direction we walked. We were forced to go with the flow which meant turning onto another street (there was no vehicle traffic near the park tonight). It's difficult to describe but imagine probably a five or six lane road with sidewalks on both sides packed with as many people as you could possibly fit. As far as we could see this was what it was like. Then people started pushing, I think because groups were getting separated so they were trying to push their way through to get back with whoever. I have never felt claustrophobic before but I started to when I realized there was no way out. The three of us were still pretty close together but not for long. I started to feel like I was panicking and knew I needed to find a way out. I noticed a spot against a wall so I pushed my way over as quick as I could and yelled for Melanie to do the same. We weren't able to find Eric in time to tell him to get over. We stopped against the wall for a while trying to get ourselves back to normal (not easy to do when people are pushing you against a brick wall) and think of a plan. This is when I started to think about how people die from getting trampled as I felt myself being crushed against this brick wall. Yeah we were scared! We decided to just wait there as long as it took to get the crowd smaller. I don't know how long we waited there, maybe 20-30 minutes, but eventually we noticed the crowd thinning a little so not caring what people thought we held hands and started walking again. I kept hoping Eric had just kept walking and wasn't trying to look for us (he currently doesn't have a cell phone). We walked for a while and eventually came to a subway station that would take us home. Fortunately Eric had kept walking, only stopping occasionally to see if he could spot us. He was also starting to feel like he might panic but was able to keep pressing on until it finally thinned out enough he could stop and have some space. He got all the way home and fortunately his phone, which hasn't been working well for a while now, worked just long enough for him to call me and us to both know we were all okay. Because like he keeps saying, that's how people get trampled to death. He says he couldn't stop thinking about the Black Friday at Walmart stories you hear almost every year. If someone in that crowd would have tripped and fallen I'm not sure how they would have ever got back up again. It was probably the scariest situation any of us had ever been in, because I'm not exaggerating when I say there were literally thousands of people all trying to walk on one street, shoulder to shoulder.
The Lesson: Don't worry we all learned our lesson and will avoid anything that could potentially involve a crowd like that for the rest of the time we are here! I'm not sure we will even be able to get on a crowded subway for a few days! Wow. I wish I had pictures to show you the crowd. Tomorrow I plan to see if I can find a news article about it and will let you know if I do. Maybe that was just a normal thing for here. I honestly don't know how you could possibly even try to control a crowd that big.
Anyway that was our story for the day and one we plan to never have to tell ever again! Here are a couple pictures from the fireworks...
What we saw was a great show! We're just not sure it was worth such a scary experience later...
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