Senior South Korean Police Officer Sentenced to 3 Years Over Crowd Crush

A Seoul court sentenced a senior police officer to​ three years in prison on Monday, ​convicting him of contributing through negligence to a Halloween crowd crush that killed nearly 160 people in 2022 in one of South Korea’s worst peacetime disasters.

Lee Im-jae, the former chief of police in Yongsan District, the area in central Seoul where the disaster happened, was the most senior police officer to be ​found guilty of a crime related to the shocking tragedy.

Victims’ families remain deeply unsatisfied and angry with the government’s investigation into the deadly crowd crush. Prosecutors have indicted a total of 23 people, mostly middle-ranking police and civilian officials. So far a handful have been convicted, with the longest sentence being handed to Mr. Lee.

But on Monday, the district court acquitted Park Hee-young, the elected mayor of Yongsan District, of criminal negligence, allowing her to continue in office.

The most senior official indicted — Kim Kwang-ho, the former chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency — is on​ trial on criminal charges similar to the ones Mr. Lee faced.

On the evening of Oct. 29, 2022, thousands of young people packed into Itaewon, a popular neighborhood for nightlife in Yongsan, to enjoy the first post-pandemic, restriction-free Halloween weekend in Seoul. Hundreds jammed into a narrow and sloping alleyway from both ends, creating a deadly squeeze in the middle.