Concert chaos as fans stampede
- Source: Global Times
- [08:26 June 01 2010]
- Comments
A group of teenage fans of South Korean pop stars sit in front of the Expo Performance Center on Sunday surrounded by hundreds of armed police officers deployed to maintain order. Photo: Ni Dandan
By Ni Dandan
Armed police were called in to the Expo Park Sunday when thousands of fans waiting for a South Korean pop concert stampeded after discovering that expected tickets for the event had been given away.
The organizers were supposed to reserve 2,000 tickets out of 5,000 for the concert featuring Super Junior, a popular boy band from South Korea. But only 200 were handed out at 10 am, a local senior high school student, Hu Feifei, told the Global Times at the Expo Performance Center.
According to the fans, staff in the center gave them the wrong information about where the tickets would be distributed, which kept the crowd charging between the western and southern gates of the Center, with some falling on the ground.
"I saw shoes, hats, purses and glasses on the ground. In the rush, I saw a girl fall onto the ground. Her head was trampled upon four times. She was bleeding," a fan surnamed Wang, who didn't want to give her full name, told the Global Times. Wang said she was so frightened she burst into tears.
By then the center was surrounded by two ranks of armed police officers, who stood with linked hands, preventing anyone unauthorized from getting close to the building.
An security officer, who declined to give his name, told the Global Times that the armed police were the mobile force for the Park. "We took action to maintain order once we received the command," he said.
Without commenting on online rumors that several people had died in the chaos, expo organizers only confirmed Sunday that two girls had been slightly injured. "The minor injuries were handled by medical staff inside the Park," said an unnamed official with the security department of the Expo Bureau.
A staff member from the South Korea Pavilion, surnamed Kim, said the fans' passion was understandable but they could do nothing to help the situation. "The Expo Bureau is in charge of ticket issues. We felt sorry that so many people couldn't get a ticket. But I think it would have been better if they had accepted the fact sooner," Kim said.
Although organizers announced soon after 10 am that all the tickets for the evening show had been taken, a lot of fans, mostly teenagers, were angry and refused to leave without a proper explanation.
