In 2003, South Korea experienced its worst subway accident ever.
A mentally ill person set a fire on the subway, killing 193 people and injuring 147.
The most shocking thing is not that the man set the fire in full view, but the two drivers of the subway who had an accident, at the critical moment, one shouted "don't move" and abandoned the car and fled, and the other locked the gate and cut off the passengers' way out.
As long as all three of them had a normal brain, it would not have caused such serious consequences.
Today, let's take a look back at the "Daegu subway arson case" that shocked South Korea.
Sudden fire
Back to February 18, 2003, in Daegu, South Korea.
At 9:30 a.m. that day, during the morning rush hour, train 1079 arrived at a station with a lot of people coming up.
At this time, a girl sitting on a chair suddenly noticed a man with a black handbag in the crowd, looking a little wrong, his expression was gloomy, and the girl felt a "malice" from him.
Later, the girl saw the man take out a lighter from his bag, and kept repeating the action of extinguishing the lighter, I don't know who it was, and suddenly said: "Don't play with lighters in the car, it's very dangerous." ”
As soon as the words fell, the man sneered, and then took out two bottles from his bag, and as soon as he unscrewed the lid, a pungent smell spread, and the girl's face changed immediately when she smelled this smell.
Because that's gasoline!
When the girl found the man holding a lighter and was about to set fire to the contents of the bottle, she immediately shouted: "Hold him quickly!" But before the people around him could react, the man lit the gasoline bottle in his hand and threw it on the subway seat.
The seats on the subway were not stainless steel, but velvet, so they were ignited by the fire all of a sudden, and the passengers in the carriage saw this scene and instantly became chaotic and began to flee in all directions.
The carriage, which was a little farther away from the fire car, did not know that there was a fire in the car, and an old man saw that he was about to reach the next station, the central station, so he got up from his chair and walked near the door, but at this moment, a man shouted "on fire" and rushed into the car where the old man was.
The old man didn't react, and was directly knocked to the ground by the man, and almost fainted when he hit his head on the ground.
The chaos in the carriage also alarmed the driver Cui Zhenghuan. Cui Zhenghuan immediately thought of the fire extinguisher in the car, he took the fire extinguisher and walked out, only to find that the fire was much more serious than he imagined.
He comforted the passengers, saying that the train would arrive at the station immediately, and the door would automatically open when it arrived, so that everyone should not run around. While taking out a fire extinguisher, it sprayed wildly on the fire, but because the fire was too big, a single fire extinguisher could not play much role.
Seeing that the fire was still showing signs of getting bigger, Cui Zhenghuan also began to panic. When he arrived at the station, the door opened, he dropped the fire extinguisher, abandoned the car and ran away without looking back. He did not tell the subway control center about the train on fire, nor did he call the firefighters. Not even the consciousness of evacuating passengers.
The passengers scattered and fled, some escaped without any problems, but some of them collapsed in the carriage due to the large amount of smoke they had inhaled, and the old man who had been knocked down could not stand up and tried to crawl towards the door, while a woman tried to pull him but was forced back by the fire.
The passengers, who were safe, took out their mobile phones and called the fire department, thinking that the incident would be solved soon, but the tragedy had just begun.
The second disaster
Because the driver of No. 1079 was irresponsible and did not report to the authorities, the metro control center did not know what was happening at the central station. The next train No. 1080 departed as usual, and when Choi Sang-yeol, the driver of No. 1080, drove the car close to the central station, he found a burning train not far away, which scared his scalp numb.
He seemed to have been so frightened that he had lost the ability to think, and made a decision that was incomprehensible to ordinary people, and instead of contacting the control center to report the situation to them immediately, he continued to drive forward. His idea may be this: the car in front of me is not in my way, on the track next to me, I just drive over, and then I will contact the control center at the next stop.
But the result of his choice was to push all the passengers into the abyss of death.
As soon as the No. 1080 train he was driving arrived at the central station, he found that the No. 1079 train next to it had triggered the station's safety mechanism due to the burning too strong, causing the current system to be automatically cut off, and the No. 1080 had no way to start.
However, under normal circumstances, the train will automatically open the door when it arrives at the station, and even if the train cannot leave the fire scene, passengers still have a chance to escape. But Cui Xiangyeol, the strange driver, pulled out the main control key of the train, causing the door to be unable to open, his reason was that the smoke was billowing outside, and once the gate was opened, a large amount of smoke poured in, which would poison a large number of people.
But he seemed to have forgotten that the smoke could not get in, but they would not be able to get out like this, and they would be burned alive in the carriage by the spreading fire!
A group of passengers were so angry with the driver's outrageous operation that they scolded their mothers, but Choi Sang-yeol had completely lost his ability to judge, he just tried to calm everyone down, saying that he had contacted the control center and that there would be a fire alarm soon.
This group of passengers should not die, although they met this kind of "delirious" driver, but it happened that on this day, there was a big guy among the passengers, named Kwon Chun-sub, he is a veteran driver with 10 years of train driving experience, in such a dangerous situation, he made a choice at the first time, first found the emergency switch under the seat next to the door, and tried to use the emergency switch to open the door.
But after he pressed the switch, he found that the door did not open, he realized that the switch might be faulty, so he didn't try again, but immediately made a decision, and went directly to pull the car door with his bare hands.
But at that time, the flames in the car had already ignited, and the passengers were all stupid, either screaming and wailing, or running away indiscriminately, and some people's clothes had even begun to burn, Kwon Chun-sub knew that the only person who could save the passengers in the car might be himself.
He used all his strength to open the car door, and finally let him force it open. When the passengers on the train saw this scene, they immediately rushed forward, Kwon Chun-sub let some old people and children leave first, and finally escaped before the fire completely engulfed the train, although Kwon Chun-sub relied on his own efforts to successfully open a survival channel, but only 60 people, including him, escaped from the carriage, and the rest of the people, some of them were burned alive before they had time to go out, and some were trampled to death in the chaos before the car door was opened.
By the time the police and firefighters arrived at the scene of the crime, it had completely turned into a hell on earth, and there were countless charred corpses lying on the two broken trains, all of which were the bodies of passengers, and the drivers of the two trains did not die on the trains!
That's right, the "Choi Sang-yeol" who asked everyone to wait calmly also fled secretly, and the two drivers surnamed Choi abandoned the car and fled when the passengers needed them to stand up the most. This kind of irresponsible behavior is despicable!
After the police understood the ins and outs of the incident, they also quickly launched a "liquidation" of those responsible for the accident.
The end of the accident
The biggest person responsible for the accident is naturally the murderer who caused this disaster, because many passengers of No. 1079 have witnessed the murderer committing the crime, so the police quickly identified the murderer, who is 56-year-old Kim Dahan. He did not die at the scene of the fire, and after the 1079 train arrived and opened the door, he ran away.
It's just that in the process of escaping, Jin Dahan's foot accidentally touched the hot car door and was burned, and when he was caught by the police, he was still planning to go to the hospital for treatment.
After investigation, the police found that the reason for Jin Dahan's arson was not aimed at a passenger or the train driver, but that he was suffering from mental illness, to be precise, he had "bipolar disorder" and "depression".
A long time ago, he was still a normal person, but since he lost his job after a stroke in 2001, he began to be dissatisfied with reality, thinking that God was deliberately targeting him, and as he grew older, his revenge against society became more and more intense. He even said to the doctors, who were actively advising him on treatment, "Sooner or later, I'll burn you to death."
On the day of the crime, he had a bipolar attack, his mood fell to the bottom, and he wanted to pull a group of people to die together, so he set his eyes on the subway station with a large flow of people, and after preparing bottles filled with gasoline and lighters, he walked into the subway station to commit this arson case.
Originally, according to the seriousness of the crime he committed, he should have been sentenced to death, but the court finally changed the sentence to life imprisonment because of the fact that he was mentally ill, but Jin Dahan did not survive for long, and died of a stroke after he was imprisoned for about a year.
This may be God's punishment for committing a cruel crime.
Soon after Kim Dae-han was sentenced, the police indicted two more drivers, Choi Jung-hwan and Choi Sang-yeol. They believe that if it weren't for the irresponsibility of these two people, the disaster would not have become so serious, and the two of them would be equivalent to being accomplices in creating this fire.
Choi Jeong-hwan's biggest mistake was that he did not report the situation to the control center in time, causing another train to break into the fire scene, causing more casualties.
Choi Sang-yeol's mistake was even more serious, he clearly saw a fire in front of him, but he still stubbornly wanted to drive the train to the station, and locked the door after the train arrived at the station, seriously wasting the passenger's escape time. If there was no experienced train driver Kwon Chun-sub on that car, desperately opening an escape route for the passengers, then it is very likely that none of the more than 100 passengers on the train would be spared.
What is the difference between Choi Sangyeol's behavior of letting people not leave the scene of the fire but running away by himself and deliberate murder?
After intense discussions in court, the court finally handed down a verdict and sentenced Choi Jung-hwan to four years in prison and Choi Sang-yeol to five years in prison.
This punishment is still too light for the harm caused to these two people.
This incident also exposed that the subway company has a very serious problem in selecting people. Drivers who drive, especially those who are involved in such large passenger transport, should have a strong sense of responsibility and the ability to deal with crises, but the performance of these two drivers in the face of disasters is shocking.
If only one driver is unqualified, it can be said that it is a personal problem of the driver, but a disaster, the quality of the two drivers involved is so poor, indicating that the subway company is likely to have not conducted an evaluation and assessment of the drivers who came to apply for the job when selecting people.
In this incident, the most innocent are the dead passengers, who used their lives to pay for the low-level mistakes of these people, and they really feel unworthy for them.