Near a Seoul subway stop, a man attacked several people with knives, killing one and injuring three, police told AFP. The attack took place near Sillim subway station in the southwest of the South Korean capital, police added. The suspect was arrested at the scene of the crime.
“The suspect is a male in his thirties who did not appear to be under the influence of alcohol. We are in the process of questioning him on the motive for his crime,” the police said. “The man cried out that he didn’t want to live anymore when he was apprehended by the police,” TV channel YTN reported.
Alerts of the attack on social networks
“People came running into my store, they told me that a man with a big knife was stabbing people. We locked the door,” a neighborhood trader told YTN.
Witnesses say the suspect repeatedly stabbed a man on the phone in the back, before fleeing and attacking others, the newspaper reported. Chosun Ilbo. “The four victims are believed to be men,” the newspaper added.
This attack quickly became the subject of discussions on Korean-language social networks. “Don’t come to Sillim now. I called the police after seeing an injured person on the ground, ”warned a user on Twitter using the pseudonym sanong_cos.
Several similar attacks in recent years
Earlier this year, in the southern city of Busan, a 23-year-old TV drama fanatic stabbed to death a woman he had met online, local media reported.
In March, a 37-year-old woman was charged with wounding three people with a knife on the subway, apparently after being called “ajumma”, a term for a middle-aged woman.
Last year, a man stabbed a former co-worker to death in a subway station after years of stalking her. He was then sentenced to several decades in prison.
Despite these isolated attacks, South Korea is generally considered an extremely safe country, with a homicide rate of just 1.3 per 100,000 people in 2021, according to official statistics.
