Song Jung-hee wiped away tears and placed a single white chrysanthemum at a memorial to the 154 victims of a deadly crowd in South Korea.

What would become a Saturday night of post-pandemic celebrations in Seoul’s popular nightlife district of Itaewon has become one of South Korea’s deadliest disasters.

With tens of thousands of people crammed into a narrow alley – and police and crowd control action nowhere in sight – eyewitnesses have described partiers being trapped, crushed and suffocated in a flood of people.

“I wish we could have protected her,” Song, 69, told AFP while wiping her eyes with a tissue.

“I feel guilty – we failed the young people.”

Mourners in various plights gathered around Song at the altar set up in central Seoul. Many sobbed as they laid a flower, and some in office suits – paying their respects during the lunch hour – queued for their turn.

“I cried all night for the poor young people we lost. They were so young, in the prime of their lives,” said Park Sun-ja, 71, whose eyes were sore and swollen behind sunglasses.

“This is such a loss for our country,” she told the AFP news agency.

The youngest victims were schoolchildren, South Korea’s education ministry confirmed Monday, but most were young women in their 20s.

“The victims were young. I’m a similar age and I’m just devastated by what happened,” 19-year-old college student Hwang Gyu-hyeon told AFP.

“I can’t believe this accident happened, despite the signs that were clear beforehand,” she said. “Nothing was done to prepare for this crowd.”

There is growing criticism in the media and online of police oversight and crowd control at the Halloween event. The government has defended the scale of the police operation.

But many mourners at the memorial altar blamed authorities and the lack of crowd control measures.

“If only there had been more police officers to keep order, this wouldn’t have happened,” Song said angrily.

The 154 victims included people from more than a dozen different countries, from Australia to Vietnam.

Japanese businesswoman Chi Naomi, 46, said the deaths of two of her compatriots brought disaster home for her.

“It doesn’t feel like someone else’s tragedy,” she said, adding that while young people in Japan also enjoyed Halloween celebrations, authorities made sure they were safe.

“I wonder why there was no proper control in Itaewon that day,” she said.

“I was on the construction site myself and it’s such a small alley. They could have taken so many steps as making the alley one-way or limiting the number of people there. I don’t understand why those steps weren’t taken.”

At a second official memorial in Noksapyeong, near Seoul’s new government buildings, a group of police officers came to pay tribute to the victims. Many looked visibly moved as they placed white flowers on the altar.

A group of families linked to the 2014 South Korean Sewol ferry disaster that killed 304 people – mostly school children – wore yellow jackets and also came to the Noksapyeong memorial to pay their respects, crying when they laid flowers at the altar.

At a makeshift memorial near the narrow, ten-foot-wide alley at the epicenter of the disaster, Buddhist monks chanted prayers for the dead.

Friends hugged and comforted each other while adding their flowers and other tributes to the growing pile at the crime scene, which soon took up much of the sidewalk.

British tourist Robyn Lindsay told AFP that she and her friends were at the Itaewon Halloween event on Saturday night.

“But we left before it got too crazy because it was just too much,” she said, adding that they managed to get out and head home before the disaster.

“We were very, very lucky,” Lindsay said, wiping away her tears as she paid her respects to the shrine on the side of the road. “We are only thinking of all the victims and their families.”