Janelle Story, 35, told BuzzFeed News she was going on a bar crawl when she came across the crowds in the street. By 8:30 p.m., Story, an American who lives in Seoul, said the area was already full of people. “Even just getting out of the subway station was intimidating,” she said via Twitter messages early Sunday. “It took 20 minutes to exit the station.”

As she was moving from bar to bar near Hamilton Hotel, she said the crowds were packed tightly together, but nothing at that point seemed to be dangerous.

“Even though I was uncomfortable, no one was ‘out of control,'” she said. “We were all just moving very slowly and orderly.”

But then around 10:30 p.m., Story said she started to feel more panicked by the situation as she was capturing footage of the scene, which she posted to Twitter.