New details about the deadly Itaewon crowd crush reveal that emergency response authorities took half an hour to issue the initial-stage response alert.

Rep. Cheon Jun-ho of the main opposition Democratic Party(DP) on Sunday released the recorded conversations between 119 callers and dispatchers on October 29 showing a 119 call was made three minutes prior to 10:15 p.m., which the authorities said was when the first call came in about the crowd surge.

In the newly disclosed call to fire authorities in Itaewon, the caller reportedly uttered words such as “suffocating,” but could not be heard clearly, before hanging up. Lee Il, a senior official of the National Fire Agency, said the dispatcher logged the call as “disconnected” due to a lack of information indicating a dangerous situation. 

According to the accounts of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters given in media briefings on Saturday and Sunday, the first-stage response system by the fire agency mobilizing the nearest fire stations in response to the crush was in place at 10:43 p.m.

The response was gradually raised to the second-stage alert another 30 minutes later while the highest third-stage alert was put in place at 11:48 p.m.

The agency made its first report on the matter to the safety ministry at 10:48 p.m. while it reported it to the presidential office at 10:53 p.m., the authorities said.