Song Eun-young, the former Itaewon Station chief who oversaw Line 6's Itaewon Station during the Oct. 29 crowd crush disaster, reiterated that non-stop train measures were unnecessary at the time.
Song appeared at a fact-finding hearing held by the Special Investigation Committee for the Oct. 29 Itaewon Disaster at the Bank Hall in Jung-gu, Seoul, on Tuesday. Asked whether she would still not order non-stop service if she could go back in time, she answered, "That's correct."
"No one informed me of the external situation that day, and I did my best, including cutting off passenger flow and directing them to street level," Song said. "If conditions inside the station had been dangerous, I would have naturally requested non-stop passage and asked police to control external entrances. I didn't implement it because station staff believed they could sufficiently manage the situation."
Song Byeong-ju, former chief of the 112 Emergency Response Center at Yongsan Police Station, who discussed non-stop implementation with Song by phone around 9 p.m. that day, also testified at the hearing. He said, "Station Chief Song told me non-stop service wasn't possible because more people were boarding to go home than getting off."
Kwon Soon-jo, a mechanical engineering professor at Pusan National University who appeared as a witness, argued the opposite. "If non-stop passage had been implemented on the day of the disaster, it could have reduced both the frequency and duration of dangerously high crowd density," he said.
Kwon, who simulated pedestrian flow inside and outside Itaewon Station, emphasized that "as non-stop frequency increased, crowding incidents clearly decreased." He added that "Itaewon Station's structure funnels all entry and exit flows from every direction into a single point, creating high potential for crowding even with small numbers."
Tuesday marked the second and final day of hearings. Officials including Yongsan District Mayor Park Hee-young, former National Police Agency Commissioner Yoon Hee-keun, and former Seoul Metropolitan Government First Vice Mayor Kim Eui-seung were called to testify about problems in post-disaster response and recovery efforts. Former President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was also summoned to appear, is expected to decline.