By Yun Suh-young
A man in his 30s suddenly attacked citizens with a knife at a subway station in Uijeongbu, north of Seoul, Saturday evening, injuring eight passengers and triggering pandemonium.
The attack by the 39-year-old man, identified by his family name Yoo, started when he spat in a subway car and got into a quarrel with two passengers who reprimanded him.
Yoo, a day laborer, got off at the station but the two followed him out.
He swung a box-cutter at the duo _ a man and a woman _ on the platform, inflicting facial and shoulder injuries.
Yoo then went on to attack six others who were waiting on the platform.
The station was splattered with blood and passengers panicked while trying to escape the scene. Officials at the station and citizens cooperated in efforts to catch the perpetrator, who was apprehended by police 10 minutes later.
The injured were taken to four hospitals by the 119 rescue team. They are all in a stable condition.
The police requested an arrest warrant for Yoo after two days of investigation into his motive and details of the incident. He will be charged with attempted murder and assault.
Investigators quoted Yoo as stating that he attacked the people in a fit of anger. He said the assault stemmed from being scolded by a passenger inside the subway carriage.
According to witnesses, Yoo left the train immediately after being told off by a male passenger for spitting on the floor of the subway train. The passenger, however, followed Yoo outside the train saying, “How can an adult spit on a public facility?”
Yoo, who was on an ascending escalator at the time, suddenly attacked the man and the woman accompanying him with a knife and fled on the descending escalator. When he landed on the platform, he started swinging his knife randomly at people.
As the platform was thrown into chaos, Yoo escaped the scene. Several citizens and station officials followed him and confronted him 120 meters from the station until the police came and took him away.
1 | Gwangju's popular Alleyway restaurant resurrects |
![[INTERVIEW] North Korean defectors bear brunt of remittance scams](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/75c261156ac7415fad92dc1d7c1b30cf.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
![[INTERVIEW] Foreign-born entertainers seek to revolutionize local industry](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/4a6b2bd3d23044d699dee3c5bb956863.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
