It was the first conviction of officials over the failure by authorities to prevent or adequately respond to the overcrowding that occurred in the popular Itaewon district.

SEOUL - A South Korean court handed a three-year jail term on Sept 30 to a former Seoul district police chief over a crush that killed more than 150 people, the Yonhap news agency reported.

A former South Korean police officer was sentenced to three year imprisonment over a crowd crush that killed at least 158 people at a nightlife district during Halloween festivities in 2022.

A South Korean court sentenced three police officers to prison for their mishandling of a 2022 Halloween crush in Seoul's Itaewon district that killed nearly 160 people. This is the first conviction related to this incident,

A South Korean court on Monday sentenced the former police chief of a district of Seoul to three years in prison for a botched response to a deadly Halloween crowd crush in the capital's Itaewon nightlife district in 2022.

Lee Im-jae, a former district chief, is the most senior official to be convicted in connection with the 2022 disaster that killed nearly 160 Halloween partygoers.

The former head of a local police station in Seoul has been sentenced to three years in jail over a deadly 2022 Halloween crowd crush, making him the highest-ranking law enforcement official to be held criminally liable over the disaster.

People poured into a narrow, sloping alleyway between bars and clubs, the weight of their bodies and a lack of effective crowd control leading to scores of people being crushed to death

A South Korean court handed a three year jail term Monday to a former Seoul district police chief over a crush that killed more than 150 people, the Yonhap news