"Should I Buy Personal Safety Products?"... Public Anxiety Grows Amid Series of Knife Rampages

People Share Tips Online on How to Respond to Crime
₩1,000 Whistles Temporarily Sold Out at Daiso

Public anxiety is growing as violent crimes continue to occur one after another, following the Songpa case involving the murder of a mother-in-law and the kidnapping of a wife, and the knife rampage in Incheon.

Eight people were injured when a man in his 50s went on a knife rampage at a large commercial facility in Namdong-gu, Incheon, on the afternoon of the 13th. The photo shows the second-floor restaurant area as investigators examine the scene. Yonhap News Agency.

According to Naver DataLab Shopping Insight on October 16, the click index for "personal safety products" stood at 100 that day. The click index sets the day with the highest number of clicks during the period being measured at 100 and shows the number of clicks on other days relative to it. The index reached its highest level in the past month that day.

This was about 5.3 times higher than the click index of 19 on October 10, before the knife rampage in Incheon. The increase is believed to reflect heightened interest in personal safety products amid a series of violent crimes.

Earlier, in May, a girl identified as the late Lee Chaewon was kidnapped and murdered in Gwangju in an attempt to sexually assault her. On October 12, a man in his 60s fatally stabbed a woman in her 40s, with whom he was in a relationship, in front of a hotel in Yeondong, Jeju City.

On October 13, a knife rampage took place at a commercial building in Incheon. Ten people were attacked, and eight of them were injured. On October 15, a woman in her 50s was arrested by police after threatening a shop owner in her 60s with a kitchen knife in front of a store in Buk-gu, Gwangju.

Posts asking for recommendations for personal safety products have continued to appear online. One user of an online community said, "I bought a personal safety whistle today, left it unused, and have only just taken it out." Another user lamented, "What's happening these days isn't normal, and even looking for ways to respond and cope makes me feel powerless."

On social networking services (SNS) such as X (formerly Twitter) and Threads, people shared ways to respond to knife rampages, along with specific advice such as, "Keep personal safety spray somewhere that's easy to grab, rather than inside your bag."

Responses to the posts included, "From now on, everyone has to protect themselves," and, "I'm seriously considering whether I should buy personal safety products."

Whistles, an inexpensive emergency item, have also temporarily sold out online. On October 16, the "Emergency LED Whistle Set," sold for 1,000 won on Daiso Mall, was marked "temporarily out of stock" for courier delivery.

Experts, however, point out that buying personal safety products alone has limits when it comes to preventing crime.

Lee Geonsu, a professor in the Department of Police Administration at Baekseok University, stressed, "Because crimes happen in an instant, there are limits to what individuals can do to prepare on their own. We need to strengthen cooperation among the police, probation services, and mental health institutions."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.