Gwangju police have apprehended a Mr. Park who stabbed a woman to death outside a Gwangju Catholic church on Wednesday. Park, 38, from Naju, slit a woman's throat and wrists outside a church in Unam-dong at roughly 6:37 pm on the 8th. A Munhwa Ilbo article says Park told the police he drove toward Gwangju from Naju, picked a church, and started stabbing. Police are also looking at Park for two other killings in Gwangju, the May 20th murder of a doctor at a Yongbong-dong parish, and a March 19th murder at a Jungheung-dong church. The articles now make the geographical connection to churches, though the original news stories don't.
Park had accumulated a hate for churchgoers. Last July he married a Mongolian woman, but after an unpleasant marriage she went back to her country in April on the encouragement of people she met at church. Park went to Mongolia to find her, but returned in May unsuccessful. Other articles mention that he had been receiving treatment for depression that past five years. Perhaps worth noting that all three victims were women.
There is a video report here, with the relevant clip showing up at 0:46 after some news out of Paju. They blur the church name at the first close-up, but fail to do so when they show the sign again, which is how we learn the name is 천주교운암동교회. Unam-dong is where we stayed during teachers' orientation in August, 2006, if any readers were in the same group as me, and is a place I walk through frequently getting to and from my fiance's apartment.
7 comments:
This is horrible. Good thing is this guy doesnt have a gun or any explosive, otherwise it could end up in a shooting rampage/mass killing.
I used to live at the church, unfortunately, in YongBong. I can't believe that they didn't catch him previously. There are cameras everywhere in that area.
Good grief! Naju is my neck of the woods! I am beginning to wonder if that sense of safety I have had while bicycling around is not a bit misplaced!
Just a month or so ago a woman in my apartment complex, who runs one of those hole-in-the-wall samgyupsal diners next to the little apartment-mart was stabbed to death by a drunk who aparently didn't like the way she "Looked" at him.
I am beginning to feel less and less safe.
At a church I used to attend a man who was angry that the counselors were advising his wife to leave him went into the middle of a crowded sermon and shot that pastor, wounding him, and shot dead another pastor before an off-duty sheriff's deputy shot and killed him.
Of course, it's the church that's at fault for this kind of thing, not the guy that's so violent and irrational that he would go and kill someone over it.
So much for the Lord protecting people. People get killed in Church, on the doorstep, anywhere.
You have to always be vigilant.
As for Churches... I can go on and on about Korean Churches.
Spam alert
Post a Comment