CrimePsych

For a reason that i have been unable to put a finger on, six of the top seventeen cases of murder/mass murder/serial killing have taken place in Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea). This could be due to any number of reasons, the first one that comes to mind is population size, but i’ve not done any research into this so it is simply guess work at the moment.

Topping out that list of seventeen events is the Uiryeong Massacre, perpetrated by a South Korean police officer back in 1982. Being only a baby at the time i’m unsure whether this event gained widespread media coverage in the Western world but one would seriously hope so as 57 people were murdered and another 35 were injured in this callous, although spur of the moment – planned attack – on an entire community.

Background
On the afternoon of April 26th, 1982, Woo Bum-kon had an argument with his live in girlfriend Chun Mal-soon. Storming from the house he headed for his police department where he hung out at the armory and began drinking heavily until he was severely intoxicated. It is unclear whether Woo had decided what he was going to do already, before beginning to drink, or if he decided to commit this heinous act once intoxicated, but the end result was the same.

Taking a rifle and grenades from the available arsenal in the armory, he headed to the local telephone exchange around dinner time where he murdered three exchange employees – supposedly to eliminate the ability for people in the community to be able to reach emergency services once he undertook his rampage.

Upon leaving the telephone exchange he headed for local houses, and systematically walked from one to another, using his position as a police officer to gain the occupants trust and subsequently access to their homes. Upon entering their houses he would murder them – usually by shooting – but in one instance he used a grenade to kill an entire family.

Over the course of approximately 8 hours, and having murdered people in five villages, Woo took his final two grenades and strapped them to his body. He then lit the fuses of the grenades while holding three more people hostage and as a result killed himself and said hostages.

It was found through witness comments including those by his then girlfriend that Woo had a major inferiority complex and had also taken a large amount of abuse from villagers for living with his girlfriend before they were married.

Personally it seems that due to his inferiority complex, and obviously assuming that after his argument with his girlfriend, that they were going to break up, his sense of pride/shame kicked in and in his eyes he probably had no other choice. He quite obviously did not want to face the community that had beseeched him with insults for living with someone he was not married to, and as a result, upon making his choice to end his own life, decided to take out his aggression and pain on the same community that had ‘attacked’ him. Another case in a long line of modern day cases where a person with major self-esteem and other related issues has destroyed not only their own life as well as the lives of many others around them.