South Korean police announced increased patrols, stop-and-search operations on the streets, and other precautions after the relatively placid country’s second knife rampage in two days and a string of attacks and threats over the past three weeks.
The suspect in the latest attack was arrested on Friday after stabbing a high school teacher.
Two weeks ago, South Koreans were shocked when a 33-year-old man named Jo Seon went on a stabbing rampage near the Sillim subway station in Seoul’s Gwanak district. Jo attacked a young man outside the street exit from the subway station without warning on a Friday afternoon, stabbing him 13 times and killing him. He then attacked and wounded three other men in their 30s.
Jo was soon taken into custody by the police, who revealed his name and other personal details to the public, which is unusual in South Korean criminal cases. The police said the random cruelty of the attack fulfilled the conditions for disclosing the identity of the suspect.
Also, video of the attack recorded by CCTV cameras went viral on the Internet, spreading panic and bringing additional distress to the families of the victims. The individual who uploaded the video was arrested, and at least 17 copies of the video clips were deleted from social media.
The authorities described Jo as a man with heavy drinking habits and no permanent occupation, with a long history of juvenile detentions and three adult criminal citations, but no record of mental illness. Jo confessed to the crime and said he attacked random strangers because he “wanted others to feel miserable like himself.”
Less than a week after Jo’s rampage, another man was arrested for writing an online threat to murder “twenty Korean women” at Sillim Station. He actually used a somewhat difficult-to-translate misogynist term for the women that alarmed the police because it has become popular in the rowdier corners of South Korean social media.
The police launched an intense cyber manhunt to find this individual, but the day after posting his threat, he called South Korea’s version of 911 to turn himself in.
At roughly the same time this threat of further violence at Sillim Station was posted online, a man in his 70s was arrested for stabbing a woman in her 50s in western Seoul. The two were seated in the same vehicle in an underground parking lot when the man attacked the woman with a knife in broad daylight, then fled into the nearby apartment complex.
Seoul police took the man into custody within five hours. The victim survived her injuries. Police said the attacker and victim knew each other, but released few other details about the case.
On the evening of Thursday, August 3, a 23-year-old man drove his car into a pedestrian walkway in Seongnam, a city in the Seoul metropolitan area. The man then leaped out of his vehicle and went on a furious rampage with two large knives. At least five people were injured by the car crash, and nine more were stabbed. Eleven of the victims required hospitalization.
As with the Sillim attack, the incident took place near a subway station, raising the possibility of a copycat attack. A video posted by local media showed the man strolling through a shopping mall near the subway station wearing sunglasses and a black hoodie, randomly attacking people who came near him. Eyewitnesses described screams echoing through the mall and blood splashed on the walls.
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that the assailant is in custody and has been rambling “incoherently” to the authorities about being “stalked” by some unspecified adversary.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol called for “ultra-strong” police response to the sudden wave of “terrorist attacks on innocent victims” – but only hours after he spoke, yet another attack took place, this time at the Songchon High School.
South Korea’s then-President Elect Yoon Suk Yeol speaks during a news conference at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea on March 10, 2022 (Kim Hong-ji/Pool Photo via AP, File).
Police on Friday described the assailant as a man in his late twenties who waited for a 49-year-old male teacher to emerge from his classroom at the high school, then stabbed him multiple times and fled the scene. The suspect was taken into custody two hours later by a force of 200 officers dispatched to the scene. The victim was undergoing surgery for his wounds on Friday afternoon.
Police officials said the circumstances of the attack implied the victim was acquainted with the assailant. South Korean media reported the attacker gained entry to the school by claiming to be an alumnus.
The Korea Herald on Friday reported “anxiety and fear” spreading across the country after the wave of seemingly unrelated assaults:
Cho, an office worker who commutes near Seohyeon Station, recounted experiencing extreme panic on Thursday night while trying to go home after work.
“There is no guarantee that such incidents won’t happen again, and the thought of having to worry every day in my daily life is mentally exhausting,” Cho said.
A woman in her 50s surnamed Kim also expressed her anxiety, saying, “Whenever I hear such news, I worry that it could have happened to our family if we were there. I am even considering canceling a family trip we had planned.”
One woman told the Korea Herald that she and her friends have begun sharing a “murder warning list,” derived from the locations mentioned in online threats of violence like the one posted after the Sillim subway attack.
Parents said they were afraid to let their children play outside, people are losing trust in their neighbors, and some are beginning to worry that emergency alerts like fire alarms might be a ruse to lure them outside for mass-casualty attacks.
Seoul police on Friday announced a “special policing” operation to “counter heinous crimes” and alleviate public “anxiety.”
“We will selectively stop and search those suspected of owning a weapon or people acting strangely according to the legal procedures,” National Police Agency Commissioner-General Yoon Hee-keun, said, adding, “We will utilize the maximum police force in public places, including local police, riot police teams and police detectives, to strengthen patrols and suppress the atmosphere for criminal activity.”
Yoon added that people who post threats online or spread alarming disinformation will be punished “as severely as the law allows.”