hankyoreh

Still from the “Crush” trailer taken from YouTube.

“Crush,” a two-part documentary on the deadly crowd crush that occurred in Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood on Oct. 29 of last year, debuted last Oct. 17 in the US on the streaming service Paramount+.

The documentary was made by See It Now Studios, a partner company of the US CBS network. One of the producers, Jeff Zimbalist, made the 2022 documentary “11 Minutes” about a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.

But while the documentary focuses on a disaster that happened in Korea, Koreans were not able to view it as of this Monday.

The situation has to do with copyright issues: the production company only signed a supply contract with Paramount+ in the US.

In a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh last Saturday, Paramount+ Korea explained, “‘Crush’ is not original content that the production company and streaming service worked together on from the planning stages. It’s a case where the production company made it first and then sold it to Paramount+ US.”

“At present, the production company has not held discussions on providing the content with other countries outside the US,” it added.

Due to these copyright issues, those accessing the Paramount+ US webpage from Korea are not even able to view the trailer. Some Korean viewers have been accessing the documentary by indirectly connecting through a virtual private network (VPN).

Observers have said the controversy over the documentary’s availability in Korea is a reflection of its blistering portrait of the situation in Itaewon on the night of Oct. 29 last year.

Without any narration, it shows excerpts from 1,500 hours of material drawn from 280 sources, including eyewitness accounts by people at the scene, cell phone calls by survivors, closed circuit camera footage, and press conferences.

Based on the three-minute trailer shown on YouTube and reviews in the foreign press, the documentary is painful to watch as it is a vivid record.

Young people enjoying the experience of freedom after the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic are suddenly confronted with death as they are plunged into a situation with no escape. Cries of “help” can be heard all around, while one emergency rescue worker says, “We have to give up on people we can’t save and try to save those we can.”

It’s an unvarnished portrait of a terrifying experience. One American survivor who lost a friend describes still experiencing trauma since that day, including a fear of crowded spaces.

The documentary pays particular attention to the aftermath of the disaster, asking how such a tragedy could occur in the heart of a city that’s well equipped for dealing with crowds due to frequent protests, as well as why the police and other agencies didn’t jump to action despite more than 11 phone reports with vivid descriptions of what was happening.

Still from the “Crush” trailer taken from YouTube.

Pointing to the handling of the accident and the government’s response in the wake of the crowd crush, the film suggests that the devastating events of Oct. 29, 2022, were the product of generational issues in Korean society and political problems.

In an interview with the Guardian, “Crush” executive producer Jeff Zimablist said, “The explanations that we got and that were offered in the series had a lot to do with the politics of using tax money to allocate big amounts of resources and authorities to do crowd control in a district of the city that is generally rather stigmatized as a place of fun and revelry for the youth.”

Drawing parallels with the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry, Zimbalist said, “You have to ask, why not now? Why were these systems put into place successfully in other instances but not in these two? The obvious consistent factor between these two mass tragedies is that the majority of the attendees and the victims were of a younger generation.”

Moreover, the filmmakers suggest that the Korean government devalues youth culture and young people, and that this tragedy exposed a generational gap in the culture. Josh Gaynor, a co-executive producer for the documentary, told the Guardian that those who lost friends or family in the disaster feel that they deserve to have answers to the questions of when and where their loved ones died.

A review in Rolling Stone’s online edition said that the documentary could have been lengthened to delve into “social analysis with a tenacity to match the detailed on-the-ground reportage and postmortem on the lack of responsibility taken by government officials.”

While it’s unfortunate that “Crush” is unavailable for viewing in Korea, there have also been criticisms of the lack of any documentaries on the subject matter by local streaming services as we approach the one-year anniversary of the tragedy.

“It’s unfortunate that we aren’t making any relevant documentaries for mass media like global streaming or TV programs,” commented an indie documentary director.

By Nam Ji-eun, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]