A lawmaker on the special parliamentary committee investigating the Itaewon crowd crush says more than 120 emergency calls were made between 10 and 11 p.m. concerning the crowd surge on October 29.

Main opposition Democratic Party lawmaker Youn Kun-young revealed the figure on Wednesday after analyzing data on 112 calls from the tragic night that he acquired from the Yongsan Police Station.

Previously, police had released transcripts of eleven 112 calls made between 6:34 and 10:11 p.m.

According to the police data obtained by Youn, calls requesting help to control large crowds began to come in before 10:15 p.m. when the crowd surge occurred in full scale. Subsequent calls primarily concerned fears of being crushed or smothered to death, while some callers simply cried or screamed.
  
Song Byung-joo, the former chief of the station's 112 emergency hotline situation room, was found not to have alerted the top brass despite the string of incoming emergency calls and simply repeated orders via police radio for officers to lead crowds on the streets to sidewalks.

Youn said that on the day of the tragedy, the capacity to manage a crisis was nonexistent due to a virtual vacuum in the leadership of related agencies. The lawmaker stressed the need to find out why there was such a vacuum and hold to account those responsible.