TikTok adventure to tragedy: Grace Rached life cut short in Seoul stampede

Grace Rached and her friends were living the TikTok life: sharing every crazy moment of Seoul. But the stampede cut short her adventure just over a week from her birthday.

A large crowd surges into a narrow alley during a Halloween festival in Seoul’s Itaewon district on Saturday. Picture: Reuters

Grace Rached and her friends were living the TikTok life: ­sharing every crazy moment of visits to cafes and fashion shows in Seoul with thousands of followers.

“When you go, nothing goes with you,” Rached had posted online a few months ago.

“So you may as well enjoy your time here.”

The 23-year-old’s globetrotting adventure was cut short just over a week from her birthday, when she was killed in the Halloween stampede in the fashionable Itaewon district of the South ­Korean capital, which has claimed more than 150 lives.

The aspiring film producer’s friends, Kim Yerim and Justina Cho, are still in hospital after being caught in the crush on Saturday night.

Aspiring film producer Grace Rached.

For almost a week, the three women’s mutual friend Nathan Taverniti had livestreamed their escapades in the city’s “crazy cafe” culture, their sampling of Korean cuisine, and their time rubbing shoulders with the fashion elite to their thousands of TikTok and Instagram followers.

Rached, a film assistant, who also shared videos of her nightclubbing in Bali and travelling in Mexico City, was remembered by her parents on Monday as a “talented film producer who was passionate about making a difference”.

“She cared deeply about her two sisters and was a wonderful role model. Grace showed us all what it meant to be an incredible human being,” they said in a statement.

Before the group prepared for a night of raucous Halloween celebrations, they had met Mr Taverniti, a creative producer who moved to South Korea after studying at the University of Technology Sydney.

Mr Taverniti said on Monday the tragedy could have been avoided if proper planning had been in place before an estimated 100,000 people descended on the narrow street for the country's biggest outdoor Halloween festival. He took to TiKTok soon after the stampede to describe the event in vivid detail, blaming South Korean authorities for failing to pre-empt the “slow and agonising crush”.

“There was no stampede … This crush was not caused by drunk people. It was [a] lack of planning [by] police force and emergency services. Nobody was willing to help,” Mr Taverniti said in a TikTok post that was later taken down. “I watched as people filmed and sang and laughed while my friends were dying, along with many other people. I was trying to pull people out because there was not enough police officers and nobody was doing anything to make the crowd stop.”

Grace Rached, bottom right, with friends Justina Cho, top left, Kim Yerim, top right, and Nathan Taverniti on the night of the tragedy.

Julia Cho, who was not at the Halloween event, posted on TikTok that her sister, Justina, and friends had been failed by event organisers who, she said, bore “sole responsibility” for the disaster. She added that “she may never get her sister back”.

Rached, who was due to celebrate her birthday in mid-November, began her holiday in Bali before travelling to meet her close friends in Seoul.

By Monday, tributes to the young woman – a former school captain of Canterbury Girls High – were shared across social media. Her former employer said she was a “kind-hearted” and “passionate individual”.

Grace Rached. Picture: Instagram

Electriclime Films executive producer Shahn Devendran said: “Grace was a fun, friendly, kind-hearted and passionate individual who loved to make films and make people laugh.”

According to the company, Rached attended UTS to complete a degree in media and production and join Electriclime Films as an intern before progressing to a full-time role that ­required international travel.

University friend Silvio Cohiji, who had met Rached at UTS, said she had had an exciting future ahead of her.

“She was an amazing person. A beam of light that would do anything to lift the people around her and had such a huge life ahead of her,” Mr Cohiji said.

“She was doing amazing things in her career and travelling a lot.”

Among the fatalities, 97 were women and up to 26 were foreign nationals, including people from the US, China, Norway, Thailand and Uzbekistan.

A Department of Foreign ­Affairs spokesman said most of the 153 deaths were people in their 20s or 30s, while more than 100 others were injured, including 23 who were in a critical condition.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol visited an altar near Seoul City Hall on Monday to mourn the dead, while his government launched an investigation into one of the country’s deadliest incidents in decades.