South Korean court convicts 3 ex-police officers in cover-up of deadly Halloween crowd crush

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court on Wednesday convicted three former police officers of destroying internal files and other evidence in an attempted cover-up after a Halloween crowd crush that killed nearly 160 people in the capital, Seoul, in 2022. They were the first convictions over the deaths.

The high death toll was largely blamed on official failures in disaster planning and a botched emergency response. More than 20 government and police officials were indicted.

The Seoul Western District Court sentenced Park Seong-min, a former senior intelligence officer at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, to 18 months in prison on charges that he ordered subordinates to erase internal documents after the crush. Those included reports showing how police ignored warnings about possible crowd-related accidents in the nightlife district of Itaewon.

Kim Jin-ho, a former intelligence officer at Seoul’s Yongsan district police station, received a suspended one-year sentence on similar charges. Kwang Yeong-seok, a lower-ranking officer at the Yongsan station, received a four-month deferred sentence after being found guilty of destroying files under Kim’s instruction.

A civic group representing victims’ families issued a statement welcoming the ruling, which they said recognized “criminal liability of public officials for failing to anticipate and prepare for the huge crowd leading up to the tragedy, and for covering up and downplaying information about the tragedy after it happened.”

The group also criticized South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for vetoing last month a bill passed by the opposition-controlled parliament to appoint a special investigator to lead an independent investigation into the accident. Following