In some places in Asia, Halloween is commodified and appropriated to voice dissent. It was crazy to see. It is now crushed (some times literally rip)
I want to emphasize that Halloween was not commodified or appropriated to express dissent here. It was a very localized phenomenon primarily celebrated in the traditional "foreigner neighborhood" near the now mostly defunct yongsan army base.
The deaths were a failure of the government, on several levels, to control excessive crowding in alleyways. Our friends that died that day were not protesting, they were just out having fun