SEOUL: One person was killed and another three were wounded when a man went on a “stabbing rampage” near a subway station in the South Korean capital Seoul on Friday.

The attack took place near the Sillim subway station in south-west Seoul, police said, adding that the suspect had been detained at the scene.

“The suspect is a man in his 30s and he did not look intoxicated. We are questioning him as to the motive of his crime,” they said.

Video posted on a local television station showed orange-vested emergency responders running towards the incident carrying stretchers.

Police had cordoned off the area with yellow tape, the footage showed.

“The man shouted he didn’t want to live any more as he was being apprehended by the police,” the TV channel reported. Grainy footage appeared to show police apprehending the suspect, who had sat down on steps and seemed to sit passively as armed police approached him and placed him under arrest.

“People ran into my store, telling me a man with a big knife was stabbing people. We locked the door,” a store owner in the area said.

Eyewitnesses said the suspect stabbed a man who was talking on the phone in the back multiple times before running off and attacking more people. “All four victims are reportedly men,” it added.

South Korea is typically an extremely safe country, with a murder rate of just 1.3 per 100,000 people in 2021, according to official statistics.

By comparison, America has 7.8 homicide deaths per 100,000 people, according to the country’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2023