On the afternoon of April 26, 1982, Woo Bum-kon, a police officer in Kungryu, Uiryeong, Gyeongsangnam-do province, more than 300km from Seoul, was sleeping when his girlfriend Chun Mal Soon woke him up because she slapped a fly on Woo’s chest. Woo got angry, the two had a serious argument before he left for the police station, where he worked, at around 4 pm. There he consumed a large amount of alcohol.
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| Woo Bum-kon |
After more than 3 hours, Woo returned home and smashed things, beat his girlfriend, and then left for the station again. At that time, the meeting was taking place inside the police station, so no one noticed that Woo sneaked into the armory and took weapons. Those include 2 M2 Carbines with 180 rounds of ammunition, and 7 hand grenades. Then he roamed the streets.
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| The same M2 Carbine that Woo used |
Woo Bum-kon's first victim was a
pedestrian on the street at 9:30 pm. He then entered the local post office,
killing one operator and three on duty. He then cut off the phone lines so
people in the area couldn't call the police.
He went to the market and threw a
grenade at it, then he opened fire, killing 6 people. His girlfriend Chun Mal
Soon ran out after hearing gunshots and was also shot and wounded by him. Since
then, he had gone from village to village, taking advantage of his police occupation
to get into houses and shoot people.
At 10:30 pm, he arrested an 18-year-old young man first-named Kim and forced him to go to Ungye-ri village, where he asked Kim to get him a soft drink from a grocery store run by a 52 year-old owner. Woo then killed Kim and then assaulted the shop owner and his family, leaving only the store owner alive wounded. Woo continued to the market and killed 15 more people.
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| The market where people were killed |
In Pyongchon-Ni, he shot a family of four in their bed and then went to another house where everyone had woken up. Here, the householder asked Woo what was going on, and Woo said there was an alert because a North Korean agent was detected. The family invited Woo into the house for dinner and they had confided with each other. But the family atmosphere quickly turned to hell when he shot all 12 people in that house. He went out and killed eight more people, bringing the total number of deaths in Pyongchon-Ni to 24.
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| Bodies of the victims |
Although the police were notified when the first gunshots were fired, it took more than an hour for them to form a team of
37 people to look for the shooter. At 1:40 am, the national police headquarters in
Seoul was notified. At the same time, just 4km from the police station, Woo
Bum-kon entered a farm with the explanation that he was looking for a North
Korea agent. Woo ordered the family to gather in one room so he could protect
them.
Two hours later, the police surrounded the farm. Woo waited for them to enter the house, and detonated the last 2 grenades, killing all the hostages, and committed suicide.
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| Remains of the farm where the rampage ended |
Until then, he had killed 56 innocent people. The fact that a policeman in the blink of an eye became a terrifying murderer, causing a shocking massacre in South Korea made the people of this country extremely angry. Under public pressure, hundreds of policemen were fired and many officials such as the Minister of the Interior or the Chief of the National Police had to resign.
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| Mass funerals in Uiryeong |
It was also the world's largest mass shooting committed by a lone gunman at the time, breaking the previous record held in Japan in 1938 (read Mutsuo Toi & the Tsuyama Massacre). It was broken in 2011 after Anders Behring Breivik, a right extremist, killed 69 people on Utoya island in a double terror attack in Norway.
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| A South Korean newspaper reporting about the killing spree |
Despite being seriously injured, Chun Mal Soon somehow survived the massacre and was later interviewed by the police. She said that the likely reason for Woo Bum-kon's rampage could be the fact that he and she lived together as husband and wife despite not being married. Over time, the negative comments from the neighbors made Woo's mind more and more aggressive. Like Mutsuo Toi, Woo Bum-kon was also a victim of long-term depression and this led to his violent behavior.