Outcry Call Duty Maker Faces After Using Itaewon Footage
Bereaved families in South Korea have demanded that Activision remove real footage of the 2022 Seoul crowd crush from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. The publisher says the clips were meant to convey a fictional story and that it never meant to treat the tragedy lightly.
Bereaved families in South Korea have demanded that the makers of Call of Duty remove real footage of the deadly 2022 Seoul crowd crush from the latest game in the series, setting off an outcry for the Call of Duty maker as the country marks the disaster's fourth anniversary on Thursday.
The clips are only seconds long. They appear in the opening moments of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and stand in for civilian casualties during a fictional North Korean invasion.
What the footage shows
One clip shows a chaotic scene in which a figure performs CPR on a victim lying in the street. Another shows rows of bodies laid out in the road and a victim being carried away on a stretcher.
A total of 158 people were killed in a narrow alley in Seoul's Itaewon nightlife district during the Halloween weekend in 2022. Two more have since been recognized as victims, having died from trauma caused by the disaster.
Families push back
The bereaved families' council and a coalition of civic groups issued a joint statement on Wednesday demanding the footage be removed. "We are appalled that the chaotic and desperate scenes, in which countless citizens performed CPR to save one another and victims lay on the cold street, were used exactly as they were to create a scene in a game," they said.
They added that people who took part in the rescue, or who witnessed the crush, are still living with trauma. Hateful comments about the victims, they said, have been spreading online in connection with the game's premise.
The Korean Game Users Association has also called for an apology and for the footage to be replaced.
Activision responds
Activision, the game's publisher, said news agency that some actual news footage in the opening cinematic was used as an element to convey the fictional story within the work. The company said it had "absolutely no intention of mentioning or treating lightly any actual tragic events, including the Itaewon tragedy."
The Guardian said it had contacted Activision for further comment.
How it came to light
Players in South Korea spotted the clip after the game's release. Korean broadcasters then compared it side by side with footage filmed on the night of the crowd crush.
The game follows a South Korean marine private fighting a North Korean invasion through recognizable Korean streets. It was already a political talking point before launch. Conservative politicians urged President Lee Jae Myung, who is pursuing a more conciliatory approach toward North Korea, to play it to understand what they described as the threat from Pyongyang.
Within days of its release, the game topped South Korea's sales chart on Steam, the leading PC gaming platform.
