Man arrested for threatening to kill women at Sillim Station

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Man arrested for threatening to kill women at Sillim Station

Published: 25 Jul. 2023, 17:17 Updated: 26 Jul. 2023, 12:17

A passerby on Tuesday pays her respect to a man who was fatally stabbed near Sillim Station in Gwanak District, southern Seoul, last Friday, at a memorial spot where he was killed. [YONHAP]

A man was arrested on Tuesday for threatening to murder "20 Korean women” the next day at Sillim Station in southern Seoul, less than a week after a stabbing rampage in the same neighborhood resulted in one death and three injuries.

Seoul’s cyber police said the suspect called the 112 emergency number on Tuesday morning to turn himself in, a day after he wrote the threat on an online forum.

The cyber investigation bureau of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency had been looking for him on charges of intimidation.

Officers said they were investigating his motive.

The term the suspect used to describe his intended victims, hannyeo, is a derogatory one used to describe Korean women in certain anti-feminist communities.

In Guro District, western Seoul, a man in his 70s was also arrested on Monday afternoon after stabbing a woman in her 50s inside a vehicle at an underground parking lot of an apartment complex.

Police said the victim was hospitalized in critical condition.

The suspect and victim had known each other, but how was not immediately revealed.

Officers said the man stabbed the woman at around 10:40 a.m. on Monday and was caught about five hours later hiding inside an apartment.

His motives are under investigation as well.

As for the 33-year-old murder suspect who killed a man and injured three others, all complete strangers, near Sillim Station last Friday afternoon, police said they were planning to decide on Wednesday whether to reveal his identity to the public: his face, name and age.

Under Korea’s Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Specific Violent Crimes, the prosecution or police may disclose the personal information of criminal suspects if the crime was “committed in a cruel way,” if sufficient evidence exists to prove that the suspect committed the crime, if the disclosure guarantees the people’s right to know and if the suspect isn’t a juvenile.

The last time a criminal suspect’s personal information was revealed was when 23-year-old Jung Yoo-jung faced charges of murdering a woman of the same age she met online.

Regarding the CCTV footage of the Sillim murder, which quickly went viral, police said a person has been booked for allegedly uploading the footage to the internet, causing public anxiety and secondary victimization of the victim’s bereaved families.

The police also requested the Broadcasting and Communications Commission to remove the video clips after finding 17 of them through online monitoring.

The suspect’s stabbing rampage began at around 2:07 p.m. last Friday at a bustling street near Exit 4 of Sillim Station in Gwanak District, when he stabbed a man in his 20s 13 times, eventually killing him.

Three other men, all in their 30s, were stabbed but survived the attacks.

The suspect confessed to police he committed the crime out of anger and wanted others to feel miserable like himself.

BY LEE SUNG-EUN [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]