At shopping malls, at subway stations, at parks. Anywhere crowds of strangers gather has become a target. Random knife attacks are happening again and again.
Police said on the 15th that the Namdong Police Station in Incheon has requested an arrest warrant on attempted murder charges for a man in his 50s, identified as A, who swung knives held in both hands at strangers at the C&C Building in Guwol-dong, Namdong District.
At about 1:49 p.m. on the 13th, A rode escalators from the second basement level to the third floor while swinging a knife, injuring eight people. More than 10 knives were found in his backpack. A had previously served a prison term on attempted murder charges and was wearing an electronic monitoring anklet at the time of the attack. Police are also investigating whether he had taken drugs.
Sillim, Seohyeon, Seoul Station: Public Stabbings Repeated Over Three Years
Random stabbing attacks keep recurring. In July 2023, a man in his 20s swung a knife on a road near Sillim Station in Seoul's Gwanak District, killing one person and injuring three. In August of the same year, a knife attack outside the AK Plaza department store at Seohyeon Station in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, left 14 people injured. The attacker first drove a car into a crowd before swinging a knife.
In May 2024, a man in his 40s carried out an indiscriminate knife attack in the plaza in front of Seoul Station, injuring several passersby. Measures to prevent recurrence have been raised each time an attack occurs, but similar crimes have not stopped over the past three years.
The common threads are clear. Facilities used by large numbers of people with heavy foot traffic were targeted, the attacks took place during daylight hours, and the assailants went after strangers with no connection to them. A, the suspect in the Incheon case, also said he had taken drugs at the time of the attack. In the earlier cases, mental health problems and social isolation were cited as common background factors.
Experts point to social isolation, problems with anger management and gaps in mental health care as reasons such random attacks keep recurring. Indiscriminate attacks on strangers unrelated to the assailant often reflect a vague hostility toward society as a whole, according to their analysis.
Facilities used by large numbers of people are repeatedly targeted, experts say, because attackers intend to instill fear in as many people as possible and because such sites make escape easier.
Measures are discussed whenever an attack occurs, but questions remain about their effectiveness. In this case as well, a repeat offender wearing an electronic monitoring anklet committed the attack just an hour after finishing a meal with his probation officer.
Expanding knife detectors at facilities used by large numbers of people, strengthening management of high-risk mental health cases and improving the effectiveness of electronic monitoring have been raised as alternatives, but critics say the same tragedies will keep repeating without fundamental institutional reform.