Activision to Strip 10 Seconds of Seoul Disaster Footage From Game Update

Activision will strip a short sequence depicting the 2022 Seoul crowd crush from "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4" after protests from South Korean family groups, with the removal set for a game update on Nov. 12. The company said Friday it was responding to criticism over roughly 10 seconds of heavily edited news footage showing emergency responders performing CPR on victims in a narrow Itaewon alley, a scene the game uses to portray the aftermath of a fictional North Korean attack on the South.

The Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families Association and the Itaewon Disaster Citizens' Countermeasures Committee issued a joint statement Friday demanding the footage be taken out. "If the game developer has even the slightest sense of respect and empathy for the victims of the Itaewon disaster, it should promptly take corrective action," the groups said.

Activision apologized and said the material would be removed completely. "In using actual news footage in the game, we never intended to evoke any tragic incident, including the Itaewon disaster, or to trivialize the suffering associated with such tragedies," the company said, according to the South Korean public broadcaster MBC.

The controversy sits alongside unresolved questions from the Oct. 29, 2022 disaster, when a crowd of tens of thousands surged through a narrow alley in the Itaewon nightlife district, killing nearly 160 people. Nearly two dozen officials have been charged in an investigation that remains underway, and three former police officers have been jailed.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said Thursday that his government would "uncover the truth." "On that day, when what should have been a joyful autumn night turned into the scene of a horrific tragedy, the state was nowhere to be found," Lee wrote on X.

Lee Jin Woo, whose 28-year-old sister died in the crush, said he played the new game before noticing the sequence. "But after hearing about it and thinking it over, I began to realize the footage looked very similar," said Lee, who works at a South Korean gaming company. "The more I thought about it, the more I felt betrayed as a gamer." Lee Mi Hyun, a director at the Itaewon Disaster Citizens' Countermeasures Committee, said the game turns suffering into entertainment. "It's an approach that seems to show absolutely no empathy for the people who experienced that suffering," she said.

The game's plot, which casts South Korean conscripts defending the country alongside American soldiers after a North Korean invasion, has drawn political reaction in Seoul. Opposition legislator Han Dong-hoon wrote on Facebook last week, "If that day were to come again, would we be 'prepared'?" Democratic Party member Kim Han Kyu countered Thursday that there is "nothing wrong with playing a game set against the backdrop of North Korea's nuclear weapons," adding, "We are still technically under an armistice, aren't we?" Opposition lawmaker Ahn Cheol Soo suggested last week that President Lee try the game to correct his "naive judgment" about the North Korean threat.

As of Friday, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4" was the top-selling game on Steam in both South Korea and the United States. The title launched globally last week, days before the anniversary of the Itaewon crush.

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