Bereaved families demand 'Call of Duty' maker remove REAL footage of the deadly Seoul crowd crush from its new game

Activision used seconds-long clips from South Korean news broadcasts of the 2022 Itaewon disaster — in which 158 people were killed — as background footage in the opening sequence of 'Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4', released last week. The footage, showing paramedics performing CPR and bodies laid out in the street, was filtered into monochrome and given a noise overlay to make it resemble war damage from a fictional North Korean invasion. Families' council official Cho In-young said the move showed a "complete lack of sensitivity to the pain felt by bereaved families" and warned that overseas victims' relatives, in Seoul for the fourth anniversary memorial, plan to formally raise the issue after collecting signatures.

Activision said it had "not intended to reference or trivialise the Itaewon disaster" and claimed it used real news footage to "establish the game's fictional narrative."

Bereaved families warned that survivors and witnesses still suffer trauma, while hateful comments about victims continue to spread online.

Thursday marks exactly four years since more than 100,000 Halloween revellers packed into Itaewon's narrow streets, causing the fatal crush.