• A teacher in her 40s confessed to stabbing an 8-year-old student to death in Daejeon.
• The teacher, who had taken leave for depression, had self-inflicted wounds and underwent surgery.
• South Korea, with a low murder rate, saw several high-profile violent crimes in 2023.

A teacher yesterday stabbed an 8-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea.

The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon, media reported.

The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died”, reports said. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined may have been self-inflicted, according to the Yonhap news agency.

“Police found that the teacher had taken a leave of absence due to depression and returned to the school late last year,” the report said. The student was at the school for after-class childcare before she was due to attend a private art class. The teacher and the girl were found by police after the child’s parents reported her missing from the art class. The teacher underwent surgery for her wounds, and police said they would resume questioning her later.

South Korea is generally a safe country, with a murder rate of 1.3 per 100,000 people in 2021, according to official statistics — below the global average of six homicide deaths per 100,000 people. The country witnessed a string of high-profile violent crime incidents in 2023, however, including several stabbings. In August of that year, a high school teacher was reportedly attacked with a knife, also in Daejeon, about 140km south of the capital, Seoul.

In the same week, an attacker drove a car into a pedestrian walkway in the city of Bundang, near Seoul, before attacking people at a department store with a knife. And in July 2023, a person was killed and three wounded in another stabbing in Seoul.

-Agence France-Presse