Janelle Story, 35, told BuzzFeed News she was going on a pub crawl when she encountered the crowd on the street. At 8:30 p.m., Story, an American who lives in Seoul, said the neighborhood was already full of people. “Even just stepping out of the subway station was daunting,” she said via Twitter posts early Sunday. “It took 20 minutes to get out of the station.”
As she moved from bar to bar near the Hamilton Hotel, she said the crowds were tight, but nothing at the time seemed dangerous.
“Even though I was uncomfortable, no one was ‘out of control,'” she said. “We were all moving very slowly and in an orderly fashion.”
But around 10:30 p.m., Story said she was starting to feel more panicked about the situation as she captured footage from the scene, which she posted to Twitter.
