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“Docu Insight: Itaewon” title card. (still from KBS Documentary on YouTube)

The documentary starts off in a cheerful, light-hearted tone.

Beginning with home video footage from someone’s childhood, it continues from there to show images of paragliding teenagers and young people enjoying a break with friends alongside the Han River. There are travel photos and images of morning soccer with friends.

It passes quickly, showing moments of happiness and joy from various young lives. Elsewhere on the screen, the names of these young people are listed.

Cut to a black screen.

“Survivors of the October 2022 tragedy in Itaewon share their eyewitness accounts,” the caption read. “They include visual descriptions and sounds from the scene of the disaster.”

These scenes are from “Docu Insight: Itaewon,” a documentary aired last Thursday on the KBS1 network on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Itaewon disaster.

It is common for documentaries of this kind to begin with images of happy moments from the victims’ lives. One advantage is that by giving more information about them, it can encourage empathy and effectively bring across the tragic nature of the incident.

In the case of “Docu Insight: Itaewon,” there may have been an even more pressing reason to open this way.

Because of its nature as a nightlife-oriented neighborhood where people of different nationalities and identities all gather together, Itaewon has often been viewed as an unusual space — one somewhat divorced from Koreans’ daily experiences. This was the kind of place these young people were heading to in unusual costumes and makeup as they went to celebrate a foreign holiday.

For this reason, the victims of the Itaewon crowd crush have often been subjected to unjust attacks. Nobody forced them to go to that neighborhood, people say. Why should they have to mourn kids who died visiting a wild place like that?

On its screen, “Docu Insight: Itaewon” brings back images of those victims’ happy youthful experiences. When reduced to vague statistics or their names alone, they may have made for easier targets for attacks; as flesh-and-blood people, they become embedded in the viewer’s brain.

Producer Lee Eun-kyu has captured explosive issues in professional yet powerful ways through the Docu Insight series “Women’s Archive x Interviews.” Here, she once again uses the same methods to look back over the events of Oct. 29, 2022, in Itaewon.

It’s an objective approach to the documentary that involves eschewing narration in favor of hearing the people themselves talk about their experiences, while using archival footage to present a narrative.

The people who sit down in front of the camera include Byeong-woo and Ju-na, survivors of the tragedy who each lost a beloved partner or friend; Seong-hwan, a father who lost his daughter; Corinne, who lost a friend who had helped her get through the loneliness of life in Seoul; and Jin-wook, a rescue worker who hurried to perform CPR in the hopes of saving even one more life that night.

Ju-na recalls her friend Song Chae-rim as someone who committed herself passionately to achieving her dreams. Byeong-woo talks about how he had been discussing marriage with his girlfriend Lee Ju-yeong after four years of dating, until he suddenly bursts into tears.

The people in the alley next to Hamilton Hotel that night were young people doing whatever they could to achieve their dreams; they were people building plans for a life together with their loved ones.

After listening to the stories of survivors, “Docu Insight: Itaewon” reviews calls made to the 112 police services number by people who spotted the dangers of the situation early on — calls made that evening at 6:34, 7:05, 8:53, 9:00, 9:07, 9:51. . . .

Between 6:34 and 10:11 pm on Oct. 29, 2022, a total of 11 calls received by 112 mentioned the possibility of a “crush.”

With an approach that is both quiet and chilling, “Docu Insight: Itaewon” asks questions of the state.

Even if there was no time to station security staff to prevent the tragedy, what was the state doing during those three hours beforehand?

Why were no measures taken ahead of time, even when anyone could have predicted there would be enormous crowds of people?

In a tragedy that would never have happened had the crowds simply been controlled, had roads been designated one-way only, had there been a center barrier in the middle of the road — why did the police not send anyone out in response to the calls they did get?

Why has nobody to date come forward to say, “I’m at fault, I’m sorry, we made a mistake”?

Since the people who should be accepting responsibility have declined to do so, it ends up being passed along to the survivors. Ju-na chastises herself, saying that Chae-rim would not have died if they had left Itaewon sooner.

Jin-wook, who grabbed whoever he could see in the alley and attempted CPR, suffers from guilt over not doing a better job that could have saved even more people.

Seong-hwan, whose daughter Sang-eun lost her life, regrets not having been more pleased to answer her phone call. When she called to tell him that she’d passed a US accounting company certification test after two years and six months of studying, he had been at work and could only give a halfhearted reply — one that blames himself for now.

While the survivors and their loved ones continue blaming themselves, society at large condemns the victims as “people who died while carousing.”

Byeong-woo confesses to feeling wracked with guilt, believing Ju-yeong might still be alive had he not confessed his feelings to her.

“You’re allowed to have fun, you know,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to die because you have fun. That just seemed so unfair.”

In a world where both the people who died and the ones who survived are condemned, Corinne says of her experience after losing her friend, “I don’t think of the ‘Itaewon disaster’ as being just about the events that night. With all these situations, I feel like I’m still living the disaster.”

Observing how the tragedy has yet to come to an end as no one assumes responsibility, “Docu Insight: Itaewon” uses its odd moments to show the viewer as many of the victims as it can. Captions mention the 115 victims whose names have been made public, along with another 44 whose identities have not been given.

The documentary encourages us to stand beside these victims, to remember the typical yet amazing young people who lost their lives in the alley that night.

Obviously, simply watching a 46-minute documentary does not mean we’ve mourned their loss adequately. But it could be the beginning of true mourning. In the words of author Kim Hoon quoted at the documentary’s beginning, “Listening and relating to the suffering of victims is a point of entry for getting at a tragedy.”

“Docu Insight: Itaewon” was broadcast on KBS1 at 8:10 pm on Sunday, the one-year anniversary of the tragedy. It can be viewed on the streaming service Wavve and KBS+.

By Lee Seung-han, TV columnist

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