On July 21, a man stabbed passers-by in Seoul’s Sillim subway station, injuring at least three people and killing one. The alleged perpetrator, who goes by the nickname “Cho”, reportedly said during police questioning: “I wanted to make other people as unhappy as I was. Since then, several men have imitated him. The latest deadly attack took place Thursday, August 3 in the Seoul suburb of Seongnam. A 22-year-old man who goes by the nickname “Choi” was arrested on Saturday for intentionally ramming five people with his car and then attacking nine others with a knife, killing a woman and seriously injuring twelve people.
A climate of fear has taken hold in Seoul and across the country as online threats to commit similar crimes have increased. A platform called Terrorless has even emerged specifically to bring together in the form of an interactive map all the threats and the information necessary to avoid the targeted neighborhoods; users can also report an attack there if they witness it. As of Monday afternoon, the platform listed 45 threats in total.
If the National Bureau of Investigations counted Monday evening 194 threats posted on social networks since July 21, the majority of them were not serious. According to the Yonhap News news agency, more than half of the suspects apprehended for posting threats (34 out of 65) are minors, with the youngest even under the age of 14 – the age of criminal responsibility in South Korea.
How do you explain the young age of so many of the threat actors? For the professor at the College of Police and Criminal Justice at Dongguk University (Seoul), interviewed by the English-language newspaper Korea JoongAng Daily, stabbings could be “the tip of the iceberg” of isolation social status of many young South Koreans. Among the suspects apprehended, many are diagnosed with psychiatric disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia or a schizoid personality disorder (which manifests itself in particular by a difficulty in feeling empathy and in forming social ties).
Another hypothesis is the spread of “incel” ideology in South Korea. This movement of thought brings together young and single men (hence the neologism “incel” which comes from the English “involuntary celibacy”, “involuntary celibacy”) who reject their loneliness on women and defend violence against them. Until you take action. On August 12, 2021, in Plymouth, UK, a man close to the “incel” community shot dead five people.
