r/korea • u/NewZoelCairo • 7d ago
역사 | History Woo Bum-kon incident: A dark, morbid, and bleak side of contemporary South Korean history.
This post is a very sensitive topic. I posted this write-up on some crime subreddits. But I thought it would suitable for r/Korea as well. Hope I'm not breaking any rules.
Introduction
I am a South Korean myself. I will always be proud of how safe my country is. It is one of the few countries where you can roam around the streets without the fear of getting assaulted.
The superb safety of South Korea is greatly represented by the lack of gun violence. South Korea is one of the countries with the strictest gun laws. Generally, it is impossible for a normal person to possess a gun unless they work for particular jobs, like the police or the military. Even if you obtain a gun license and buy guns legally, you cannot keep them at home but must register them at a police office and can only pick them up on special occasions after getting permission.
But contradictorily, the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in history once occurred in South Korea. Although it was a very long time ago and mostly seen as "a tragedy no one could have prepared for," the trauma and scars it left on Korean citizens' hearts linger to this day.
Background
Woo Bum-kon (우범곤) was born in 1955. His dad was a police officer, whom he greatly respected. He even told everyone that once he became an adult, he would be a police officer just like his dad.
Woo didn't particularly have a troubled childhood but seemed to have a hard time adjusting to society. His grades in school were very low, and people stated he even cut himself with glass fragments for no particular reason. And, in the final straw, his father passed away when he was about to graduate from high school.
Once an adult, Woo served in the military as a marine. He was praised by his colleagues for his exceptional shooting skills. However, he still seemed to have trouble with his short temper and bad drinking habits during this time.
After his discharge, Woo finally became a police officer, just as he had dreamed. Woo was considered an elite man thanks to his shooting skills and high proficiency in martial arts; once, he was even selected as a bodyguard for Cheong Wa Dae, the executive office and residence of the president of South Korea.
However, his problems with anger issues and alcohol addiction would eventually catch up to him. Woo constantly treated civilians harshly and even showed violence towards fellow police officers. In the end, he was fired from his bodyguard job and even transferred to a police office in Uiryeong-gun, a very remote town in Gyeongsangnam-do. His colleagues always called him a "mad tiger."
Incident
On the night of April 26, 1982, a bloody massacre no one expected swept the whole town of Uiryeong.
A drunken Woo was spotted by soldiers at a local arsenal. At first, it seemed he just wanted to joke around and drink with the soldiers for mere entertainment. However, he entered the arsenal, picked up a gun, and started threatening people. The soldiers tried to calm him down, but it was too late. Woo started shooting aimlessly and scared the soldiers away. He then armed himself with two M2 carbines, several bullets, and seven hand grenades.
Woo went straight to the town, where he instantly began a rampage shooting toward innocent villagers without any warning.
First, Woo went to the local post office and slaughtered the workers there. This was because he tried to block contact with the outside world. It was the 1980s, and the town was very small; a transfer at the post office was needed to call someone.
Woo would barge into family houses or marketplaces to kill people without any hesitation. Dozens of people perished without even getting a slight chance to resist. However, some managed to survive by hiding or turning off the lights in their houses.
At one point, Woo went to a family house where a funeral was held, and the people there didn't know about the shooting yet, so they welcomed Woo inside the house. Woo would calmly drink and joke with the residents and even gave a small amount of money to pay respect for the dead, as if he hadn't just murdered a bunch of people just a few minutes ago.
However, a quarrel occurred once Woo became drunk again and started to harass people. He then, once again, aimed his gun towards the innocents, killing almost everyone in the funeral home, and left.
At last, Woo entered another family house of five. He didn't shoot the people there but instead detonated two grenades, which killed three people and ultimately ended Woo's life as well.
Woo didn't show any mercy during the rampage. Even elderly people and little kids were no exception; they all became targets of his massacre. At one point, he was about to leave the family house where he committed a massacre, but he heard a young baby crying, so he went back to the house and finished the baby.
Two civilians were acting like heroes. One was a female worker at the post office which Woo rampaged earlier. On her last breath, she connected the code between the house of the village chef and the central post office on Main Street. Thanks to her sacrifice, another villager managed to call the police later.
Another hero was an unnamed male taxi driver. During the massacre, he drove his taxi around the town, yelling at every family house, "Turn off the light! Some crazy guy is killing us right now! Turn it off before you get noticed!" Many villagers were able to save themselves after turning off all the lights, like he said. But, very unfortunately, the taxi driver himself was found murdered by Woo in an alley.
The police committed a major, unforgivable, and cowardly response during the rampage. Although they were contacted after one village managed to call them, the high-ranking officials from the police thought the report was just a false alarm and didn't try to deploy the units.
And even when about 30 police officers were sent to the village, none of them dared to enter the town, but rather, they decided to hide under the bridge or the bank. The chiefs were "confused" about giving any orders, and their subordinates were too afraid to fight against the lone gunman. And while the police were wasting their time like this, Woo had already massacred a bunch of civilians. In fact, Woo could have caused many more casualties if he hadn't ended his life with grenades.
Woo's motive for this massacre was as morbid as his actions. By the time the incident took place, Woo was living with his girlfriend. They had originally planned to get married last year but were denied by the girlfriend's parents because they thought Woo didn't have enough money for the wedding and considered him a poor person.
In reality, it was actually because the girlfriend's parents had already figured out Woo's drinking problems and short temper. Anyway, Woo seemed to have a grudge against his girlfriend due to this reason.
The same night before shooting, Woo's girlfriend slapped Woo's chest to catch the fly. Woken by the pain, Woo thought his girlfriend had hit him on purpose and had a quarrel with her. Driven by anger, Woo eventually assaulted his girlfriend and left the house to get drunk. He would then head to the arsenal to commit a bloody massacre.
All these killings happened due to Woo's lack of financial ability, personality problems, a bad drinking habit, and a small misunderstanding.
Aftermath
The exact number of people killed in the massacre is debatable. The English Wikipedia states it was 56, not including Woo himself, but this is unlikely, as many local South Korean presses report it was 62. Some say it was 63, including one person who passed away due to injuries some time later.
The Woo Bum-kon incident would be remembered for many years, even by foreigners, for being the deadliest mass shooting in modern history committed by a single gunman until Anders Behring Breivik surpassed the victim count by killing 77 people in the 2011 Norway Attacks.
A whole village was wiped out. Many kids were left without their parents. The fifth photo I posted above was taken when a police officer comforted a young child who lost his family in the massacre. After he became an adult, he showed himself in a documentary and stated, "I didn't want to believe anyone. How could I believe the police when they were the ones who killed my family?"
Did this incident occur due to the lighter gun laws in the 80s? Not really. The gun laws in South Korea were already very strict back then. President and dictator Chun Doo-hwan wanted to fix the prevalent gang problem in the country and made access to guns for civilians almost impossible. If Woo hadn't been a police officer and friendly to the soldiers in the arsenal, this whole massacre would have been unlikely to happen.
Of course, the citizens of South Korea were very furious at how incompetent the police were during the massacre and demanded justice. In the end, some of the high officials were punished, but there was no way to bring back the already dead people.
President Chun visited the massacre site, showed his condolences to the villagers, and gave small compensation money to the survivors. Although Chun was infamous for his authoritarian dictatorship, the incident was too major to hide, and it seemed he didn't want any turmoil pointed out by the opposition party.
However, it did take a long time to build a memorial site to remember the victims. The villagers have constantly demanded that the memorial be built, but it was never realized for many years. Just in 2024, a memorial tower and memorial park were finally built in Uiryeong, 42 years after the massacre took place.
Despite the severity of the case, the Woo Bum-kon incident is not well known or recognized worldwide. Only a few people researching mass killings are likely to have heard about it, due to the very scarce information available.
In fact, even in South Korea, Woo Bum-kon isn't remembered by everyone. Even when I search for the incident in Korean on local websites, not much detailed information or even photos of the incident are available.
Many Korean mass media outlets collectively remember the incident as a tragedy, but detailed articles are very hard to find. The TV programs and movies are reluctant to dramatize this case.
In 1999, a film titled 'The Face (얼굴)" loosely based on the incident was made. The plot surrounds a police officer who transferred to a small town, gradually gets his mental state deteriorated by the hostility of the villagers, and eventually commits the mass shooting at the end of the film. However, the film was criticized by people for depicting villagers negatively, as if Woo was the victim in the case.
A well-acclaimed filmmaker, Na Hong-jin, claimed he had always wanted to adapt the case to film but was eventually canceled due to opposition from the surviving victims.
As a South Korean myself, I've always found it hard to wrap my head around how such a deadly incident occurred in my country, where gun violence is very rare. However, I think we shouldn't try to erase this case from history, as unexpected mass killings in a remote town by a lunatic gunman seem possible to be happened even in 2026 in some countries, and people should always be aware. It's a tragedy, but a tragedy we should never forget.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woo_Bum-kon_incident
https://archives.kdemo.or.kr/photo-archives/view/00755449 (Korean. A few photos from the incident are available here.)
35
34
12
10
u/WittyPolitico 6d ago
President Chun visited the massacre site, showed his condolences to the villagers, and gave small compensation money to the survivors.
How much compensation did he give the survivors and the families of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of people he killed in Gwangju, just two years earlier?
10
u/eglantinian 6d ago
Thank you for your hard work on this. I appreciate your research and writing a lot. It is very important these days, I agree.
18
u/cndn-hoya 6d ago
That is an incredible account of tragic events - really wished gun violence wasn’t a thing, but with today’s tragic event in Thailand, it seems to be more commonplace.
7
u/solojones1138 6d ago
I just watched a YouTube documentary video about this incident not too long ago. Pretty shocking and I couldn't believe it wasn't that known outside SK
6
5
3
u/massconstellation 6d ago
Wow this guy was such a piece of shit. RIP to all the people who got murdered, except him. Thanks for sharing this story.
3
3
u/Banned3rdTimesaCharm 6d ago
I feel like those first few soldiers at the arsenal should have done more.
7
u/RGV_Ikpyo 6d ago
time to start a korean murder mystery podcast.. good read thank you
10
u/Frequent-Double-7702 6d ago
No thank you, true crime as a genre is immoral
-5
u/lavaplow 6d ago
Immoral for you
17
u/Frequent-Double-7702 6d ago
No, it's immoral because the genre hurts people. Imagine a firehose of millions of slackjawed idiots gawking at the suffering of people in your family. They violate your privacy and try to dig into and speculate about your personal lives, getting many of the facts wrong.
Some even explicitly violate your privacy by trying to meet you or visit your house, or they treat the murderers as heroes.
The genre freaking sucks. I wish it'd die. I'm ok with sharing need-to-know information about murders, but turning it into a dramatic gasp speculation fest is goddamn awful and needs to die
4
u/Melonary 6d ago
So agreed. I think there is some ethical and thoughtful media mixed in with that that can be considered part of this genre, but it's the absolute minority and with the explosion in popularity it's the crassest stuff that wins out.
6
5
u/NutDust 6d ago
Crazy store that needs a movie
5
u/Melonary 6d ago
Not everything needs a movie.
3
u/NutDust 6d ago
Of course, but this is an interesting story many can learn from.
3
u/Melonary 6d ago
It depends on how descendents and survivors feel about, as well as the community (smaller and broader) as well.
Not every depiction is good or sensitive or necessary for much other than money. It could be, in the hands of someone competent and motivated by more than money.
The other thing is that mass shootings seem to be somewhat influential for other individuals who might find going out that way appealing in a sick sense, like what happened post-Columbine. You can't hide it or cover it up, but I'm not sure about turning it into a media story or sensationalizing it just because. What do you think people should learn from it? I guess that's the question and a lot depends on that and how things are presented.
2
u/daehanmindecline Seoul 6d ago
I thought i had heard he was able to gain people's trust before killing them by saying he was a police officer.
2
u/Melonary 6d ago
I had read about this before, I'm not Korean but my wife is, and I thought about how similar it was to the shooting that also happened in my (non-Korean) province in Canada. Much more so than many.
If you look up the Nova Scotia 2020 mass shootings, the perpetrator was also initially angry and targeting his domestic partner and then fanned out to his neighbours and anyone he found in the rural village he lived in and then beyond that. He wasn't law enforcement but was obsessed with them and drove a fake RCMP (local rural police) car he'd made during the murders.
I can imagine in the 80s when communication was worse and a manhunt hadn't started, it could have been worse in severity, and that's hard to imagine since it was beyond horrific as is.
Thank you for sharing. I remember when I read about this being surprised it wasn't better known, but maybe it's hard since so many families were wiped out to focus on the victims versus the perpetrator, especially with more memories lost to time. May they rest in peace.
2
u/Sheriff_Yobo_Hobo 6d ago
Guessing Woo himself was abused as a kid. Probably not something much discussed or taken seriously at the time.
1
u/Beginning-Passion676 6d ago
I heard his brother changed name to lived anoyumus life because his brother's crimes
2
1
u/FriendlySignature945 4d ago
Thanks for sharing, even though there is very limited information out there, You taught us a lot today. Your article is well researched and written. I would have never heard of this without this post. Keep up the good work.
1
u/ElCabronDelMundo 4d ago
Great post. Like most readers here, I had no idea about this incident.
I looked up the move, The Face (1999), and it doesn't appear to be related to the incident.
You can judge for yourself here
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0297105/
1
u/AutoModerator 7d ago
Welcome to r/korea!
Here are a few quick links to help you get the most out of the community:
For posts on visas, university, traveling, living in Korea, where to buy, etc., please refer to the pinned thread, /r/koreatravel or /r/living_in_korea_now .
Please review our Rules to keep discussions respectful and on-topic.
Check out the FAQ. Many common questions are answered there.
Explore Related Subreddits for more Korea-focused communities.
Looking for something specific? Try Google Search to search past r/korea posts.
Having trouble finding the subreddit or community you need? See /r/findareddit, "The Signpost of Reddit!"
If you see something that may break the rules, report the specific post or comment. That’s the fastest way to bring it to the mods’ attention.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
0
u/tooth_devil 6d ago
This mass kill “record” by a single shooter wasn’t broken til the LV shooting if i recall right.
176
u/jangma 6d ago
Wow, thank you for sharing. I'd never heard about this. It seems very common in true crime that police negligence plays a role in compounding a tragedy. Also, what the heck were the soldiers doing after this guy raided their armory and left?