Before the news broke of the horrifying crush on the a narrow street in the Itaewon district of Seoul—151 dead, over 100 injured—I hadn’t known that Halloween was celebrated in Korea, except among foreigners. When I asked a Korean friend about it, she told me the holiday is popular only in districts of Seoul where expats live and congregate. Itaewon is one of them, and home to the biggest Halloween party in town.
Halloween came to Korea much the way it came to Japan, where I grew up—as an odd American import enjoyed by young city dwellers . Despite its Celtic origins, Halloween in Asia is pure Hallmark: orange and black, pumpkins and ghosts and cats. In Tokyo, the epicenter of cuteness, it’s an occasion for mascots and Snoopy—whose popularity is stratospheric—to appear in Halloween finery. Shops feature Halloween-themed cakes and petit fours, pudding cups and candies. Although trick-or-treating hasn’t caught on, costumes and parties have. In Japanese cities, Halloween has been growing in popularity since the 90s—the same decade when it started being celebrated in France—but it began in the postwar expatriate community. In Tokyo’s American and International schools, Halloween has been celebrated at least since the ‘60s.
When I was growing up in Tokyo, Halloween was marked by expat children at parties in church halls, classrooms and homes. Only those who had American neighbors went trick-or-treating. I was one of them, a blonde gypsy in a colorful skirt my mother had made for me, wearing red lipstick, a kerchief and loads of costume jewelry. Roaming around the streets of Meguro, my friends and I shocked the Japanese passersby, who laughed and stared. They had no idea what our costumes and makeup signified, since Halloween was still unknown to them.
Our main destination was the Northwest Airlines compound, whose American and Canadian residents greeted us with varying degrees delight. We got candies and taffy apples from those who were prepared and coins from those who weren’t, after which we would go home and eat whatever treats hadn’t been claimed by other trick-or-treaters. My family’s offerings were always homemade, and why not? Everyone who came to the house knew us well enough to have been invited to birthday parties and play dates.
After we moved to the United States my first visit to Japan occurred in summer. I didn’t go during October until 1997 and have no recollection of Halloween merchandise then, but in 2009 it was everywhere in Tokyo. On the same trip I learned that Halloween had taken hold in Hong Kong. It had even hit Macau, where on October 31st I was greeted by costumed bar employees at my hotel. When I asked them what they knew about Halloween, they said it was a night to dress up and sell special cocktails to guests.
Which brings me to the tragedy in Itaewon. A narrow street of restaurants and bars filled up with Halloween celebrants, and with no way out but forward a deadly crush began. Pent-up demand for fun and non-existent crowd control compounded the dangerous geography, and new arrivals from the subway station created even more congestion. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and a strange fate for what used to be a little-known, modestly celebrated foreign holiday.