A year after deadly Seoul stampede, families want justice

The Star

One year after South Korea's deadly Halloween crowd crush, Park Young-soo still can't bring herself to open her late son's bedroom door.   She's one of more than 100 family members fighting for government accountability and says she can't move on from that night until she gets it.   WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline

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00:00 One year after Park Young-soo lost her son to the deadly Halloween stampede,

00:05 she still can't bring herself to open the door to his room.

00:09 29-year-old Lee Nam-hoon was one of the 159 people killed in Seoul's nightlife district Itaewon,

00:16 where hundreds of thousands of people were crammed in the district's hills and narrow alleys.

00:22 Experts say the crush, one of the worst disasters in South Korean history, was avoidable.

00:29 A police probe acknowledged authorities' crowd control negligence and poor response.

00:35 It also held 23 officials accountable.

00:39 But no senior government official has resigned or been fired over the incident so far.

00:45 "I think I have the right to know what went wrong that day,

00:52 and how the government failed to respond to the disaster."

00:56 Park and others who lost loved ones that night have taken matters into their own hands.

01:04 They've been fighting for a special law that would allow an independent probe into the incident.

01:10 Park says she can't move on until she sees some kind of accountability.

01:16 "When the day finally comes,

01:23 I'll open his room and tell him to rest in peace.

01:28 I'll take out all the anger and mortification from my heart and cry out on his bed.

01:35 I'm hoping the day will come soon."

01:38 The government has rejected calls to dismiss top officials.

01:42 But it says it's worked hard to set up a monitoring system to prevent disasters in the future.

01:49 For more UN videos visit: www.un.org/webcast

01:54 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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