Seoul Halloween tragedy: Lost shoes await owners at gym after devastating crush

Days after more than 150 Halloween revellers died in South Korea’s deadliest crowd surge, a quiet but wrenching reminder of the disaster remained Tuesday: Hundreds of abandoned shoes have been laid out in neat rows in a badminton court in the capital Seoul.

Police have assembled the crumpled tennis shoes, loafers and Chuck Taylors — part of 1.5 tons of personal objects left by victims and survivors of the tragedy — in hopes that the owners, or their friends and family, will retrieve them.

The deadly crush in the nearby nightlife district Itaewon happened after tens of thousands gathered for Halloween celebrations Saturday evening. Part of the crowd got jammed in a narrow, downhill alley between a dense row of storefronts and the district’s landmark Hamilton Hotel.

Partygoers were seen carrying out the wounded and dead, while dozens of lifeless bodies covered in blankets were laid out in rows on the nearby pavement.

Most of the victims were women and many of them were missing shoes, which experts say reflects the force of a crowd surge that stripped footwear from their feet in the crush.

Some 250 pairs of shoes at the gym are part of a huge collection of abandoned items found in Itaewon following the tragedy. There are also hundreds of pieces of clothing, including coats and movie character costumes, as well as handbags, smartphones, Bluetooth earpieces and a few passports, including at least one belonging to a US citizen.

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