In a cavernous Seoul gym on Tuesday, grieving families inspected neat rows of items left behind at the scene of the deadly crash on the streets of Itaewon.   

  Shoes, bags, glasses, notebooks, wallets, card cases and colorful hats were laid out on makeshift tables and exercise mats along the polished floor – waiting to be claimed by the next of kin of the 156 victims killed in the crowd on Saturday night.   

  “I found it. I think this is it,” said one woman, as she recognized a black coat, hugging it as she cried.   

  The middle-aged woman, who had arrived with her husband, collapsed on the floor in tears after discovering a pair of knee-high boots were missing.  They were among rows of black boots, stilettos and sneakers.  In many cases, there was only one shoe.   

  Another younger woman, wearing a cast on her left hand, entered the gym to find her lost shoe.  That woman, who did not want to be named, said she was outside a bar in the alley when the crush happened.   

  Pinned into the crowd, she said she passed out from suffocation “to the point where I thought I was dead, but a stranger yelled at me to wake up.”  Her arm was badly bruised during the incident, and after she recovered, the woman said she was held until the crowd calmed down and she could be rescued.   

  Family members entered the gymnasium, one by one and in small groups, escorted by officials who hastily donned white gloves and showed them to the tables so they could inspect and claim the carefully arranged belongings.   

  South Korea is mourning the 156 people killed, including 26 foreigners, in the Saturday night crowd crush when 100,000 people crowded the narrow streets of Itaewon to celebrate Halloween.   

  Officials had expected big numbers because of the area’s popularity for Halloween parties in the pre-Covid years, but police admitted they were unprepared for this year’s crowd.   

  Speaking to the media on Tuesday, Yoon Hee-keun, head of the National Police Service, bowed deeply as he began a press conference, admitting for the first time that he had failed the police in the capital that night.   

  Yun said officers failed to adequately respond to the emergency calls that flooded the police call center before the disaster.   

  “The calls were about emergencies that said the danger and the urgency of the situation that a large crowd had gathered before the accident happened,” Yoon said.  “However, we believe the police response to 112 (emergency phone number) calls was inadequate.”   

  On Monday, Oh Seung-jin, director of the agency’s violent crime investigation division, said about 137 people had been deployed to Itaewon that night, compared with about 30 to 90 personnel in previous years before the pandemic.   

  “For the Halloween festival this time, because it was expected that many people would gather in Itaewon, I understand that it was prepared by deploying more police force than other years,” Oh said.   

  However, police at the scene were tasked with cracking down on illegal activity such as drug taking and sexual abuse in the area “rather than on-the-ground control,” Oh said.   

  On Tuesday, South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said a “lack of institutional knowledge and attention to crowd management” was partly to blame for the crowd crash.   

  “One of the reasons was the lack of deep institutional knowledge and attention to crowd management.  However, the police are investigating,” Khan said.   

  “Even if they put more police (at the venue), it seems there was a limit to the situation as we don’t have a crowd management system, but we will have to wait for the police investigation to find out the cause,” he added.

The CNN reporter returns to the narrow alley of Itaewon a day after the Halloween disaster. See how it is

  At a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, President Yoon Suk-yeol urged the need to create systems to prevent similar tragedies.   

  “Apart from the side streets where this time the big disaster happened, (we have to) put in place security measures in stadiums, performance venues, etc. where crowds gather,” he said, adding that the government would hold a review meeting of the national security system with relevant ministers and experts soon.