Monday's stabbing appears to be power-assertive murder, says criminal profiler
Following revelations that the suspect in the recent fatal stabbing of an 8-year-old elementary student had been diagnosed with depression, controversy has arisen among some South Koreans as to whether this mental health condition was linked to her crime.
On Monday, a female teacher in her 40s stabbed first grader Kim Ha-neul at an elementary school in Daejeon as Kim was leaving an after-school program. According to the police, the teacher had been diagnosed with depression in 2018. On Dec. 9 last year, she had filed for six months of leave for mental illness, but returned to school 20 days later, after receiving a doctor's note confirming she was fit to resume her duties.
Some local media reported about online comments such as: “Should people with depression even be allowed to teach?” “Depression isn't a crime, but it doesn’t seem right to work with children;” and “How could someone with a mental illness even think of returning to work?”
However, psychiatry experts pointed out that depression is a mental illness that “holds a very low risk of causing harm to others,” noting that individuals with depression “normally don’t exhibit that kind of behavior.”
“It is difficult to find the cause of this incident in depression or the (known) mental health of the suspect,” Lee Byung-chul, professor at Hallym University’s Department of Neurology, told The Korea Herald. “Depression is a disease with a very low risk for harming others and is generally not related to the tendency to attack others."
Kim Dong-wook, president of the Korean Association of Psychiatrists, also told The Korea Herald that it’s “difficult to determine any causal relationship between Monday’s tragic incident” and the perpetrator’s depression.
“Based on media reports so far, depression alone is unlikely to explain the perpetrator’s behavior,” Kim added. “Even if (the perpetrator) is suffering from schizophrenia like some observers have suggested, that still doesn’t explain the perpetrator’s behavior, as, while schizophrenics may display violent tendencies to protect themselves due to delusions, it is rare to see them attack others to harm them."
Bae Sang-hoon, a professor in Woosuk University’s Department of Police Administration, who has experience in criminal profiling, said that the teacher’s behavior doesn't seem to stem from her specific mental illness. Rather, he said it appears to be a form of “power-assertive murder,” a type of killing where the perpetrator chooses a target that is weaker than them simply to exert control or dominance.
“Regardless of what the teacher had been diagnosed with, this crime can be seen as a premeditated one unrelated to the teacher's mental illness,” Bae added. “Based on how the teacher purposely chose to attack a student and how (the perpetrator) purchased a knife in advance before carrying out the crime, it’s hard to deem that her mental illness is something that excuses her actions.”
lee.jungjoo@heraldcorp.com
