The narrow street in Seoul's popular Itaewon neighbourhood was already packed with people celebrating Halloween as high school student Eunseo Kim and her friend pushed themselves into the crowd. Lines of people waiting for their faces to be painted or to get into restaurants slowed the flow of revellers walking through the party zone in South Korea's capital.
As the 17-year-old slowly worked her way up the narrow alley on a hill, the crowd became increasingly compressed. “Women were repeatedly saying 'please don't push', as men were saying 'push, push,'" she recalled. She began struggling to breathe as her chest was crushed.
Then she lost her balance and fell. On the ground, Kim felt like she had become invisible to the crowd. People stepped on her ankle, wrist and calf, and she remembers thinking she was going to die.
Incredibly, she survived, but at least 156 others were killed in the crush Saturday night, 101 of them women, primarily in their teens or 20s, according to figures released Tuesday by the Interior and Safety Ministry.