[100531] Concert Chaos As Fans Stampede !!

Armed police were called in to the Expo Park Sunday when thousands of fans waiting for a South Korean pop concert stampeded after discovering that expected tickets for the event had been given away.

The organizers were supposed to reserve 2,000 tickets out of 5,000 for the concert featuring Super Junior, a popular boy band from South Korea. But only 200 were handed out at 10 am, a local senior high school student, Hu Feifei, told the Global Times at the Expo Performance Center.

According to the fans, staff in the center gave them the wrong information about where the tickets would be distributed, which kept the crowd charging between the western and southern gates of the Center, with some falling on the ground.

“I saw shoes, hats, purses and glasses on the ground. In the rush, I saw a girl fall onto the ground. Her head was trampled upon four times. She was bleeding,” a fan surnamed Wang, who didn’t want to give her full name, told the Global Times. Wang said she was so frightened she burst into tears.

By then the center was surrounded by two ranks of armed police officers, who stood with linked hands, preventing anyone unauthorized from getting close to the building.

An security officer, who declined to give his name, told the Global Times that the armed police were the mobile force for the Park. “We took action to maintain order once we received the command,” he said.

Without commenting on online rumors that several people had died in the chaos, expo organizers only confirmed Sunday that two girls had been slightly injured. “The minor injuries were handled by medical staff inside the Park,” said an unnamed official with the security department of the Expo Bureau.

A staff member from the South Korea Pavilion, surnamed Kim, said the fans’ passion was understandable but they could do nothing to help the situation. “The Expo Bureau is in charge of ticket issues. We felt sorry that so many people couldn’t get a ticket. But I think it would have been better if they had accepted the fact sooner,” Kim said.

Although organizers announced soon after 10 am that all the tickets for the evening show had been taken, a lot of fans, mostly teenagers, were angry and refused to leave without a proper explanation.

“It’s unbelievable that I couldn’t get a single ticket! I was in the front of the queue. How could I just go back home peacefully after being fooled like this by the organizers,” said Lin Dan, a high school senior from Jiangsu Province. Lin Dan is a fan of Super Junior, a popular boy band from South Korea which was appearing at the concert. She told the Global Times that she waited through the whole night outside Gate No.6 to make sure of a seat at the concert.

The concert, which featured popular bands Super Junior and f(x) and star singers like Ahn Chil Hyun and Kwon BoA, was originally scheduled to start at 7 pm but was postponed by one hour.

Upon learning the news that the show had started, hundreds of fans, who had been waiting in the square outside the Center since early in the morning, burst into tears.

But then they were cheered when the doors to the performance hall were opened.

“We were told that if we lined up in order, they would let us in. So we did this immediately,” said teenager Tang Jiao. Tang called the Global Times at 8:30 pm, just after she entered the hall, saying that there were still seats available at that stage.

Other visitors to the Expo had to walk for more than 20 minutes to reach the Saudi Arabia and the Japan Pavilion from the closest bus stations after police blocked off a section of Shibo Avenue in the Park because of the protesting fans.

Source: Sina
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