hankyoreh

A 66-year-old sanitation worker, K, looks through trash left along the curbs of a street in Itaewon. (Kim Yoon-ju/The Hankyoreh)

“Squid Game” masks, plastic jack-o’-lanterns, plastic costumes — these were among the trash being cleared from a street in Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood on Halloween Sunday by 66-year-old sanitation worker “K.”

“After all the people are done enjoying their Halloween and leave, the streets of Itaewon turn into one big garbage dump,” said K, who has worked the area near the Itaewon subway station for over two years.

K began cleaning up the streets there around 5:30 am on Sunday.

“There was more of the same kind of trash you usually find — food, plastic cups, cigarette butts, things like that — and there were also a lot of cheap Halloween costumes and items that people had tossed on the ground before they left,” they explained.

Itaewon was thronged on Sunday by people dressed as monsters and characters from TV and film. Quite a number donned the masks and outfits seen in the Netflix series “Squid Game,” which has been very popular recently.

Stores and street stalls in the area had “Squid Game” masks available for 2,000 won and costumes for upwards of 20,000 won.

“On Halloween, you get a lot of people coming to Itaewon, so sales were higher than normal,” said a 75-year-old surnamed Yoon who has operated a souvenir shop in the neighborhood for the past 20 years.

“This year, we sold a lot of ‘Squid Game’ themed items and costumes in particular,” they added.

Sewing factories have also been enjoying a welcome boost in demand. A 42-year-old worker at one sewing company in Seoul’s Geumcheon District said, “Our company has made 300 ‘Squid Game’ costumes alone in the past 10 days.”

Quickly produced and sold cheaply, Halloween costumes and props are short-lived. An 18-year-old surnamed Jeong who arrived in Itaewon on Sunday in a “Squid Game” costume said, “I wanted to wear the most popular costume for Halloween this year, so I bought one ahead of time online.”

“I don’t think I’m likely to wear this costume again unless the popularity carries on until next year,” Jeong said.

A 67-year-old surnamed Oh who was selling masks of Spiderman and other characters at an Itaewon street stall lamented, “I didn’t stock any new items for things like ‘Squid Game’ that are popular these days, and because of that I didn’t end up selling a single mask all day yesterday.”

“A lot of times, people will use these cheap items for a day and then toss them on the ground, or they’ll just casually take them off on the streets while they’re drunk,” Oh said.

The topic of trash comes up again and again after Halloween celebrations. Most of the items used on Halloween are made from materials that are difficult to recycle.

The UK charity Fairyland Trust and environmental group Hubbub estimated that Halloween costumes sold in the UK during 2019 alone created over 2,000 tons of plastic waste.

“When you have huge amounts of waste being created on occasions like Halloween, it’s often not feasible to recycle items that are coated in substances or made from mixed materials,” explained Bae Jong-yoon, director of the resource cycling and reclamation team for the district office in Yongsan, the region of Seoul where Itaewon is located.

Lee Yoon-hee, a senior researcher at the Institute for Climate Change Action, said, “A lot of the costumes and props people buy for Halloween can’t be recycled because they use mixtures of different materials.”

“When people throw something away after wearing it just once or twice, that creates an unnecessarily large amount of greenhouse gas emissions,” she added.

By Kim Yoon-ju, staff reporter

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