The overnight killings
On the night of April 26, 1982, police officer Woo Bum-kon left his post in Uiryeong County and began attacking residents across several rural communities. The violence continued into the early morning of April 27. Woo died at the end of the incident.
The South Korean National Archives summarizes the case as one in which Woo killed 56 people and injured 34. Later KBS retrospectives report 62 residents killed and describe 95 casualties overall. The difference likely reflects later counting conventions and subsequent reporting; this archive therefore preserves both figures instead of presenting a false single number as uncontested.
Police access and public responsibility
Woo was not an outsider attacking a police facility. He was a serving officer and used access connected to his position to obtain police weapons before attacking civilians. That fact made the case a national scandal about recruitment, supervision and public-safety safeguards as well as an individual mass murder.
This page intentionally does not reproduce quantities, ammunition details or other operational information about the attack. Those details are not necessary to understand the crime or its institutional consequences.
Failures in the response
A 2022 KBS investigation revisiting the case reported that senior local officers were later accused of abandoning their duties, delaying an effective response and failing to warn residents while the killings continued. KBS reported that three officers were arrested and prosecuted for dereliction of duty after a joint investigation.
The later review also described officers as having been away from their posts and, after reaching the area, failing to pursue the attacker aggressively or activate warning measures for residents. These findings became central to families' long-standing criticism of the state's handling of the emergency.
Victims and aftermath
The attack devastated several small communities. Families lost parents, children and siblings over a period of hours, and survivors later described the absence of adequate public commemoration and the lasting effect of the response failures.
The case remains historically significant because it combined an extreme act of individual violence with documented institutional shortcomings. Later Korean reporting has continued to examine both dimensions rather than treating the perpetrator's identity as the only question that mattered.
Timeline
April 26, 1982, evening: Woo begins attacking residents in the Uiryeong County area.
Overnight into April 27: the attacks continue across multiple villages while the police response remains fragmented.
April 27, early morning: Woo dies and the killing spree ends.
Days later: a joint investigation examines the conduct of local police officials; officers are prosecuted for alleged dereliction of duty.
Later decades: Korean public broadcasters and archives continue documenting the victims, casualty-count differences and institutional failures surrounding the case.
Current status
The perpetrator is known and died at the end of the attack, so the criminal identity of the killer is not unresolved. The archive classifies the case as solved / perpetrator identified, while separately documenting the later scrutiny of police failures and the differing casualty totals in Korean records.