Sixteen people watching an outdoor concert in South Korea fell 20 metres to their deaths when a grate they were standing on collapsed.

Photographs of the scene in Seongnam, just south of Seoul, showed a deep concrete shaft under the broken grate. A local official announced the deaths during a televised briefing and said that 11 others were seriously injured.

A man who was involved in planning the concert was found dead early on Saturday in an apparent suicide.



Fire officials said the victims were standing on the grate to watch an outdoor performance by the band 4Minute, who are popular across Asia.

About 700 people had gathered on Friday to watch the concert, which was part of a local festival, the Yonhap news agency reported. The YTN television network said many of the spectators were female students. The victims were not immediately identified.

A video recorded by someone at the concert, which later ran on YTN, showed the band continuing to dance for a while in front of a crowd that appeared unaware of the accident. Meanwhile, dozens of people were shown standing by the ventilation grate, looking into the hole where people had been standing to watch the performance.

YTN said the ventilation grate was about three to four metres wide. Photographs apparently taken at the scene showed that the grate was at a raised level, at about shoulder height.

The incident comes as South Korea still struggles with the aftermath of a ferry disaster in April that left more than 300 people dead or missing.

For a time, the sinking jolted South Korea into thinking about safety issues that had been almost universally overlooked as the country rose from poverty and war to an Asian power.

The tragedy exposed regulatory failures that appear to have allowed the ferry Sewol to set off with far more cargo than it could safely carry. Family members say miscommunications and delays during rescue efforts doomed their loved ones.