Suspect in Severance Hospital knife attack detained over flight risk

A suspect in their 50s has been detained after wielding a knife at a doctor inside Sinchon Severance Hospital in Seoul.

Seoul Western District Court Judge Park Seok-geun issued an arrest warrant Saturday against the suspect, identified only as A, who faces attempted murder charges, citing a risk of flight.

A is accused of attacking a professor surnamed Kang with a knife at around 4:35 p.m. Wednesday in a psychiatry examination room on the fifth floor of Sinchon Severance Hospital. Kang sustained injuries to the face and hands in the attack.

When A entered the courthouse at 2:13 p.m. Saturday for the pretrial detention hearing, reporters asked why A had attacked the doctor. "In 2018, the psychiatry ward refused to provide internal medicine treatment and gave me diabetes," A said, and went on to shout, "Yonsei University turned me into a criminal."

Kang had called a different patient into the examination room at the time, and A is believed to have followed that patient inside before carrying out the attack.

A had received treatment at Sinchon Severance Hospital in 2013 and 2017 but had no appointment on the day of the attack.