The news of that day has passed, but its meaning remains with us today. "That Day, Today" reads the present through the records of the past.
Exactly 10 years ago today, on Oct. 20, 2016, Police Lieutenant Kim Chang-ho, then 54, died of internal organ damage after being struck by a bullet from a homemade gun during a shooting at the Opae Mountain Tunnel in Seoul's Gangbuk District. It came just a day after gunfire rang out in the normally peaceful center of Seoul.
Gangbuk Police Station in Seoul said at the time that preliminary findings from an autopsy by the National Forensic Service pointed to internal organ damage, including injuries to both lungs and the aorta, as the cause of death. A bullet fired by the suspect, Sung Byung-dae, then 46, had entered through Kim's left shoulder and caused fatal damage.
The projectiles Sung used were small steel balls known as bearing balls, components used inside bearings to reduce friction in machinery. The homemade firearms he built himself had power comparable to that of an ordinary handgun.
The shooting took place in the middle of a South Korean city in a country long believed to be free of guns. The unprecedented case, in which a responding police officer was killed and civilians were wounded, became known as the Opae Mountain Tunnel shooting and delivered a profound shock to society.
◇Shots Fired Out of a Grudge, Then a Hammer Attack=The incident began a day earlier, on the afternoon of Oct. 19, 2016, in front of a real estate brokerage in Gangbuk District. Wearing a helmet and body armor, Sung waited for Lee, then 69, a real estate broker against whom he had long held a grudge, to come out of the office. When Lee appeared, Sung fired a homemade gun he had prepared in advance.
The projectile missed Lee. It struck a passerby in the abdomen instead. Startled by the sudden gunfire, Lee fled toward Suyu Station on Subway Line 4.
Sung discarded the gun and chased Lee, catching up with him near Suyu Station and striking him on the head with a blunt object, seriously injuring him. Residents who witnessed the attack called police, reporting that someone had beaten a man with a hammer.
After the attack, Sung fled toward Opae Mountain carrying his homemade firearms and a bag. Along the way, he cut off the electronic monitoring anklet he was wearing. His bag was found to contain 16 homemade guns, seven bladed weapons and two homemade bombs — evidence that this was not a spontaneous assault but a premeditated crime carried out with prepared weapons.
◇First Officer Arrived in Nine Minutes, Shot by Gunman Hiding in Woods=At about 6:20 p.m. that day, police responded to a report of an assault. The first officer to reach the area near the Opae Mountain Tunnel, about nine minutes after the call, was Lieutenant Kim Chang-ho of the Bandong Police Substation under Gangbuk Police Station in Seoul.
Sung was nowhere to be seen when Kim arrived. Instead, more than 10 shots rang out from the woods above the tunnel. Concealed in the brush, Sung opened fire with a homemade gun as Kim approached, searching for the suspect based on witness accounts and the sound of the shots.
Kim was hit in the left side of his back and lost consciousness on the spot. He was given CPR and taken to a hospital but died at about 7:40 p.m. He was 54.
Two officers who arrived afterward exchanged fire with Sung, firing one blank round and three live rounds. Many people witnessed the scene, as it was during the evening rush hour when traffic was heavy. It was an unprecedented case in which a civilian sprayed gunfire from homemade weapons in central Seoul in the early evening, killing one police officer and wounding two passersby.
◇Sex Offender With Seven Prior Convictions, Delusions After Release=Sung was found to have seven prior convictions, including aggravated rape. In 2003, while serving a suspended sentence for aggravated rape, he was sentenced to five years in prison for raping a minor. With the suspended two-year-and-six-month term added, he served seven years and six months and was required to wear an electronic monitoring anklet.
He later denied the earlier aggravated rape charge and filed a complaint accusing the victim of false accusation and perjury, but was himself indicted for making a false accusation and given an additional eight months. He completed all of his sentences and was released in 2012.
After his release, he had no steady job. He quit part-time work, saying he disliked the conditions, and lost money on stock investments he had started with borrowed funds. When financial support from his family also stopped, he began blaming police for his circumstances. He fell into delusions, claiming that police who had investigated his sex offenses were systematically obstructing his affairs behind the scenes and that police were going to kill him.
The investigation found that Sung had been preparing the attack for about two months. He told investigators that he had been making guns for two months and had bought the materials near Cheonggyecheon. Police performance tests confirmed that the homemade firearms he built had power comparable to a .38-caliber revolver — enough to shatter a glass bottle 10 meters away.
A week before the attack, he conducted test firings at Jungnangcheon stream as a rehearsal. On the day of the attack, he wore body armor he had made himself by lining survival game protective gear with a plastic cutting board. Six days earlier, he had hinted at the attack in social media posts, writing that there would be a clash with police within two or three days and that his goal was to kill at least one more corrupt, pro-Japanese police officer before he went.
◇Claimed in Court That a Fellow Officer Fired the Shot, Jury Unanimous=Sung was indicted on six counts, including murder and attempted murder. At his own request, the first trial was held before a citizen jury. In court he insisted everything had been fabricated and maintained a defiant posture, drawing public outrage by claiming that the bullet that struck Kim had been fired not by him but by a fellow police officer.
After a trial lasting about 11 hours, the nine jurors returned a unanimous guilty verdict. The court sentenced Sung to life in prison.
"The defendant meticulously planned and carried out the crime in advance, and through a bizarre act, a police officer who was faithfully performing his duties lost his precious life in extreme pain," the court said. "There is nothing in the motive for the defendant's murder that can be taken into account, and it stemmed from an extreme disregard for life." Sung appealed, but the appellate court and the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, and the life sentence was finalized in January 2019.
Kim was posthumously promoted to senior inspector. After the case, amid repeated criticism that frontline officers were poorly equipped with bulletproof and stab-resistant gear, police developed a lighter new bulletproof vest and adopted guidelines requiring two sets of it, along with stab-resistant vests, to be kept in every patrol car.
