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Our coverage revealed that on the day of the Itaewon disaster, emergency medical staff who had to focus on saving people who were at the crossroads of life and death even took on the task of securing a funeral home.

This was originally supposed to be done by local governments, but the system wasn't working properly that day.



Reporter Won Jong-jin covered the story exclusively.



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[Moon Seong-cheol/Families of victims of the Itaewon disaster: That Sunday, I searched all funeral homes in Seoul.

Finding my son...

.]



In the early morning of the day after the disaster, parents who had been wandering around the hospital looking for their children who did not return came face to face with their dead children in a foreign land.



[Lee Jung-ok/Itaewon Disaster Victim's family: Bring all the bodies to the outskirts of Seoul and Gyeonggi-do, and take them there and check them...

.]



It happened because more than 150 victims were killed at once, and a funeral home was not quickly secured.



According to the guideline for social disaster victims support policy published by the government, local governments must secure a funeral home and deliver it to the bereaved family, but that night, emergency medical situation room participants were mobilized to secure the funeral home.



The group chat room of the Central Emergency Medical Situation Room obtained by SBS contained a situation in which the emergency medical situation team was forced to work on securing a funeral home due to the successive death decisions.


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The emergency medical staff, tired of arranging a funeral home all night, complained, "Why do we have to do this?"

[Shin Hyun-young / Democratic Party member of the Special Committee on Government Investigation of the Itaewon Disaster: On the day of the disaster



, the situation room of the Central Emergency Medical Center, which had to do its best to save even one more life, was doing the work of the local government, which is quite shocking.]



Confusion reached its peak on the day, and the system was still not functioning properly in a major disaster.



(Video coverage: Kim Heung-ki, Video editing: Lee Seung-hee)