Why is Activision removing Itaewon crowd crush footage from the new Call of Duty?

The latest Call of Duty game used a few seconds of real footage from the rescue after the 2022 Itaewon Halloween crowd crush in Seoul, which killed 159 people, to depict the aftermath of a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea. After the victims' families association called it highly inappropriate, Activision apologised and said the footage would be removed in a game update on 12 November.

• The footage shows CPR being performed, bodies in the street and a victim carried away on a stretcher.
• The families association told the BBC it never received a direct apology from the company.
• The game's fictional invasion plot was already contentious because the two Koreas are technically still at war.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Global News Podcast (2026-10-31). Read the whole episode summary →

▸More from this episode