At least 14 people were injured on Thursday in a stabbing and car rampage in Seongnam, a city southeast of Seoul, officials said, in the second mass stabbing incident in the greater Seoul area within a month.
Five of the victims were struck by a car that had driven onto a sidewalk, and nine others were stabbed with a knife, a spokesman for the fire department of Gyeonggi-do, a province surrounding Seoul, said.
All of the victims, except one person who sustained mild injuries after being struck by the vehicle, were taken to nearby hospitals, he said.
The police in Seongnam did not respond to phone calls seeking details about the incident and the suspect or suspects.
Stabbings and car rampages are rare in South Korea. But the incident on Thursday shocked the nation less than a month after another stabbing at a subway station in Seoul left one person dead, three others injured and the public questioning its sense of safety.
The Seoul police identified the suspect in that attack as Cho Sun, 33, and arrested him on charges of murder and attempted murder, as well as theft and fraud.
Yoon Hee Keun, the commissioner general of the National Police Agency, said in a news conference on Thursday that the Seongnam attack was being treated as a “terrorist act.”
“A series of similar incidents have recently occurred,” Mr. Yoon said. “We hope that the full range of possible punishments, including imprisonment, will be applied.”
This is a developing story.
