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Our society's promise that the police will come to help if you call 112 in case of an emergency was not kept in Itaewon last weekend.

We heard the story of that day from people who continued to watch the scene after we reported it to the police right before the disaster.



Correspondent Kim Min-jun.



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Just before the Itaewon disaster, citizens who managed to escape from the alley in question immediately called 112 and informed the police of the urgent situation.

[Reporter A: I managed to get out (from the alley



), but I called 112 and said, 'Please control it quickly, because there is an accident.



However, no police came, and the situation continued to deteriorate.



[Reporter B: The urgent situation almost happened in the alley behind the Hamilton Hotel, and there was no police at all.

It took about an hour and a half to get out of there to the main road.

During that time, there was no police entry or control or anything like that.]



If you look at the total 112 reports received by SBS from the evening of the 29th to the dawn of the next day, reports from 10:20 p.m. immediately after the accident occurred. As the number of cases soared, the content of the reports became more serious.



There were desperate calls for rescue, saying, 'It seems that there are people injured', 'I can't breathe', and 'There are people on the alley'.



[Reporter B: There were a lot of people who complained that they were going to die, and there were a lot of accidents that fell in places in that situation.

I can't breathe well.

It looks very hard to breathe.

There are people who look like this.]



There were 118 reports of 112 disasters received by 0:19 a.m. on the 30th, when Commissioner Yoon Hee-geun ordered all available police personnel to be mobilized.



Reporters who witnessed all this with their own eyes at the scene said that the police's response was beyond pity and absurd.



[Reporter A: It was very late to be put in at 00, so it should have been dispatched before anyone was injured…

When everyone is already dead, all you have to do is go out and bring out the dead, honestly.]



(Video editing: Yoon Tae-ho, CG: Lee Jong-jeong)