According to local media, authorities said that a teacher in a South Korean elementary school fatally stabbed an eight-year-old student on Monday.
After police discovered the teacher, a woman in her 40s, and the young girl at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon with stab wounds on Monday night, the Yonhap news agency said the teacher confessed to the crime.
The report stated that although the girl was taken to the hospital “in an unconscious state, she later died.”
Officials concluded that the teacher may have self-inflicted the stab wounds on her arm and neck, the news agency reported.
“Police found that the teacher had taken a leave of absence due to depression and returned to the school late last year,” stated the report.
She was at the school for after-class childcare before the student was scheduled to attend a private art lesson.
Credit: AP News
After the girl’s parents reported her missing from the art lesson, the teacher and the girl were contacted by the police at approximately 6:00 pm (0900 GMT).
According to Yonhap, the instructor had surgery to treat her injuries, and the authorities promised to question her again later.
According to government data, South Korea had a murder rate of 1.3 per 100,000 people in 2021, which is lower than the global average of six homicide deaths per 100,000 people. This indicates that the country is generally quite safe.
However, several high-profile violent criminal occurrences, including many stabbings, occurred throughout the nation in 2023.
That August, a high school teacher in Daejeon, which is about 140 kilometres (87 miles) south of Seoul, was allegedly attacked with a knife.
In the same week, an assailant struck a pedestrian walkway in Bundang, which is close to Seoul, with a car before using a knife to attack shoppers at a department store.
Additionally, in July 2023, a stabbing occurred in Seoul that left one person dead and three injured.
