A man went on a rampage in a department store in the southern suburb of Bundang on Thursday, plowing his car into pedestrians and stabbing strangers with a knife.
Twelve of the victims are in critical condition.
According to police, five people were injured when the man rammed his car into a bus stop outside the AK Plaza department store near Seohyun subway station at around 5:40 p.m.
The assailant, wearing a mask and a hoodie, then ran into the building where he began stabbing people at random, injuring another nine.
One 64-year-old man who was hit by the car suffered cardiac arrest and is in a coma.
Police rushed to the scene and arrested the assailant, a 22-year-old man identified as Choi.
A high-school dropout, Choi apparently works as a deliveryman and has no criminal record. According to witnesses, he is 175 cm to 180 cm tall and wore a black hoodie.
He did not test positive for drug or alcohol use but told police unknown force had hired a hitman to murder him and he wanted to draw attention to his plight.
Police said he seems to suffer from a personality disorder and bought a knife in a superstore in the neighborhood the previous day.
Seohyun subway station is a shopping hotspot teeming with commuters from Gyeonggi Province to Seoul.
The incident happened just two weeks after another random knife attack in southern Seoul that resulted in one death and three injuries.
Locals said they are afraid to go out, and many Koreans have started buying self-defense weapons as they believe their once-orderly country is no longer safe.
