Music in Death Alley: Itaewon, Seoul
It’s Saturday night but the popular streets of Itaewon near the Hamilton Hotel are deserted: bars and nightclubs are empty, chairs stacked outside, stools upside down on the tables. Strings of lights over one street slowly change from purple to blue, green, yellow, pink, red, and back to purple again. The festive lights look like a mistake — like someone forgot to turn them off. But their garish glow illumines another street where two police officers stand, an orange tape closing off the intersecting alleyway behind them. Bits of trash blow along the pavement and collect in corners. Several people stand here and there. I can’t read their expressions in the dim light and I wonder what they’re thinking.
It’s 6 pm, about the time that the first emergency call came in from a Halloween partygoer one week ago. I get my violin out of its case and play; standing next to me, Pastor Bill and his wife Grace sing the words. We don’t need a big audience. I am thinking of the Saturday before when this street and the bars and nightclubs behind and beside me were packed with people my age, enjoying a night of Halloween fun, not knowing that 156 lives would end there — like lightbulbs that glow brightly, and suddenly, go out. The music is for them.
I played several times this weekend and met people coming to visit or revisit this place of horrific tragedy. Nona, a Belgian student studying at Seoul University, was standing by her favorite bar, Waikiki Paradise. “I’ve cried all my tears,” she said, “I needed to come back today.” She pointed out the platform where my violin case lay: “that’s where they moved the Halloween make-up table when the street became too full.” (See video clip.) Nona touched the painted bamboo fencing that she had gripped as she protected a friend with her body. She remembers feeling the crush of humanity around her and commenting to her friend that “someone could die like this.” Many did.
I’ve watched some more footage of the Halloween party since coming home — actually since starting this post. It made me feel sick. Suddenly I could actually see the places where I played my violin as they had been the Saturday before: crammed indoors and outdoors, wall to wall, with an unimaginable number of human beings. Some fell and died and some died standing, because they couldn’t breathe. The party didn’t need to turn out that way, it was so avoidable. I have no words to express my feelings: I want to go back again, to play my sorrow for the victims — peers I never met. Most of all, I want to play comfort and peace for those they left behind, for friends and emergency responders who tried to protect and save more lives but couldn’t. Some people lost several friends, some couples lost their only child.
This Saturday, as I played my violin by the abandoned bars, a few people nearby seemed to have absorbed the music into their souls. They couldn’t understand the words that Bill and Grace were singing, but as we turned to go, one man — who turned out to be widely-known column journalist Hwang Gyoik (황교익) — asked what song we had sung. I told him, in my elementary Korean, that it was about “peace, peace like a river.” He didn’t know the hymn, but “it comforts me,” he said. In a tragedy like this, it seems impossible to find any peace. Sorrow can sometimes feel as life-quenching as drowning in the crush of a crowd. But music, at the place of death, can diminish the waves. Later, the video was shared with thousands.
For the week immediately following the tragedy, Pastor Bill and Grace from Yeongwol Bruderhof community stayed in Itaewon, ministering to hurting souls as Rapid Response Team chaplains, and training affiliated Samaritan’s Purse staff to do the same. Besides offering tissues, hugs, prayers, and counseling, they sang repeatedly. Their presence gave comfort. Thank you to those who supported them in prayer. They will continue to give counsel to and pray for the grieving souls they encountered. Bill provided many of these photos.
