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Blade threat at Korea's Antarctic base puts crew member under police investigation
Jang Bogo Station in Antartica / Courtesy of the Korea Polar Research Institute
By Park Ung
A member of a Korean Antarctic research team threatened fellow crew members with a blade at Jang Bogo Station, raising concerns about conduct and oversight at the country's remote polar outposts.
According to the Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI), a winter-over station member pulled a blade on station personnel in April. Korean media reports identified the suspect, who fashioned the 30-centimeter blade from a steel sheet in the station's workshop, as a man in his 50s with a prior record of misconduct and friction with colleagues.
The incident ended with no one injured after station officials separated the suspect from the group. The suspect departed last week and returned to Korea, Monday, where he is now under police investigation. His transport was secured through international cooperation, with Antarctic winter having largely grounded air operations.
Jang Bogo Station, established in 2014 on Terra Nova Bay in Victoria Land in southeastern Antarctica, is Korea's second Antarctic base and its first on the Antarctic mainland, built 26 years after King Sejong Station on King George Island.
KOPRI said the station is currently operating normally, adding that it conducted remote video interviews and psychological counseling for all personnel immediately after the incident. The institute also said it plans to tighten screening during the winter-over crew selection process and improve its on-site response to conflicts.
The incident is not the first of its kind. Violence among crew members at Antarctic stations — where small teams live and work in close quarters under extreme isolation — has occurred before. In 2009, a drunken crew member at King Sejong Station assaulted a colleague, but the incident only became public two months later amid cover-up suspicions, including the deletion of security footage. A separate assault at the King Sejong Station in the early 2020s surfaced only last year.