After a automobile rampage and two stabbings in and across the South Korean capital that shocked the nation previously month, at the very least seven folks have been arrested on suspicion of constructing threats to hold out comparable acts, the police mentioned on Saturday.
Most of the arrests got here days after 14 folks have been injured in an episode in Seongnam, a metropolis southeast of Seoul, that the authorities mentioned was being handled as an “act of terror.” The assailant in that case drove a automobile onto a sidewalk close to a subway station, injuring 5 folks, then went into the station and stabbed an additional 9.
One other stabbing assault in Seoul on July 21 left one particular person lifeless and three others injured. The newest arrests in reference to the homicide threats are a part of police efforts to revive the general public’s sense of safety.
The threats, specifying instances and areas for stabbing assaults at different subway stations round Seoul, have been shared broadly on social media and unfold worry, the police say.
5 of the arrests have been made in Seoul, mentioned Yoon Younger-joon, the top of a cybercrime unit on the Seoul Metropolitan Police Company. As is customary, the police didn’t establish the suspects.
The threats have been posted on varied websites on-line between July 24 and Saturday morning, the police mentioned, and talked about plans to kill folks at a number of totally different subway stations and, in a single case, at an amusement park south of Seoul. The arrests occurred in broadly scattered elements of Seoul, together with in Gangnam, within the japanese district of Seongdong and within the southern district of Gwanak, in addition to within the metropolis’s suburbs.
The police have been capable of finding the suspects by means of ideas from callers, or by monitoring the posters by their web protocol addresses. Some folks turned themselves in, and others have been apprehended on the subway stations the place they mentioned the assaults would happen.
Amongst these arrested was a 14-year-old boy within the Seoul suburb of Hanam, the police in southern Gyeonggi, the province that surrounds Seoul, mentioned in a press release on Saturday.
{The teenager} posted on social media that he would kill folks outdoors a subway station the subsequent day, the police mentioned. After receiving an emergency name and figuring out the poster, the police arrested him whereas he was strolling across the subway station on Friday.
He advised the police that he had no intention of killing anybody however “was simply bored and posted it as a joke,” in response to the assertion, which went on to warn others: “For those who submit one thing like this, even when for enjoyable, you can be arrested and punished. We are going to promptly and strictly examine homicide threats that trigger public nervousness.”
