Gunman kills three in South Korea gun spree

By Alex Jensen

SEOUL

Three people were shot dead in South Korea’s administrative capital Wednesday by a man reportedly targeting his ex-girlfriend’s new lover and her family, local media said.

The killings, in which the gunman seemed to have killed his former girlfriend’s father, brother and current boyfriend before turning a gun on himself, are rare in a country with a low rate of gun crime.

Yonhap news agency cited police in saying the gunman was believed to have been a 50-year-old named Kang.

The shooting, at around 8.15 a.m. local time (0115GMT), happened in the Geumam district of Sejong, 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Seoul.

Police said the suspect first shot a man named Kim, 50, as he was leaving for work before firing at Kim's father, who lived nearby. The men are believed to be related to Kang’s former girlfriend.

The gunman then went to a convenience store run by a man named as Song, 52, thought to be the boyfriend of Kang’s ex, and shot him, setting the store on fire before escaping.

According to Yonhap, police said Kang was found dead in Gongju, 46 km south of Sejong, with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Neighbors told police that Kang had lived with Kim's sister before she moved in with Song.

Police said Kang stole two shotguns from a police box – a police substation where weapons are stored – in Gongju two hours before the killing spree. Both were recovered at the scene of his death.

Gun possession is illegal in South Korea unless approved by the government.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, two percent of homicides in South Korea were committed using a firearm in 2011, compared to 59 percent in the U.S. in the same year.

However, in 1982, police officer Woo Bum-kon killed 56 people in a rampage around villages in Uiryeong, Gyeongsangnam province, before taking his own life. The massacre was the deadliest killing spree by a lone gunman in modern history until Anders Behring Brevik killed 77 in Norway in 2011.