A new installment in the Call of Duty franchise, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, faces public criticism in South Korea after people said the game used real footage from the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush. Bereaved families and civic groups are urging the developer to remove the material, arguing it is inappropriate to include images from a real disaster within a sequence depicting civilian casualties during a fictional war.
Reports say the footage was identified in a brief part of the game, including an intro or related sequence, and that it appears to show bystanders performing CPR. The Oct. 29, 2022 tragedy killed more than 150 people, and the backlash emerges around its fourth anniversary. While one outlet describes the controversy as centred on archive-style scenes of CPR and victims’ bodies, another focuses on the short clip being flagged by families and supporters as grounds for removal. Both accounts frame the issue around the families’ call for change rather than any defence from the publisher.
