Incheon murder highlights Korea’s growing gun concerns

A 62-year-old man who fatally shot his son with a homemade gun in Incheon’s Yeonsu District last Friday told police he had learned how to build the weapon from YouTube. Despite having no prior experience with firearms, he assembled the gun by following online tutorials. Authorities said the process required no advanced skills and that all necessary information was readily available on the platform.

The incident could have resulted in an even greater tragedy. In addition to the firearm, the suspect had built a time bomb set to explode at noon the following day inside his apartment, which was located in a building shared by 38 households. While it remains unclear whether the device was capable of causing fatalities, authorities said it could have triggered a destructive fire.

While it may be premature to compare South Korea’s situation to the mass shootings that afflict the United States, this case serves as a chilling warning. The notion of South Korea as a gun-free society may soon be outdated. Authorities are particularly concerned about the risk of copycat crimes. More troubling is the government’s limited ability to prevent individuals from secretly building deadly weapons using easily accessible online content.

In response, the government acted swiftly. Just two days after the killing, police announced tougher regulations on homemade firearms. Measures included extending the period for voluntary reporting of illegal weapons and increasing monitoring of platforms such as YouTube. Authorities also sought to ease public concern by disclosing that 8,893 gun-related posts had been deleted or blocked over the past five years.

Still, these efforts fall short of a comprehensive solution. Platforms such as YouTube largely remain outside the scope of domestic enforcement, even though Korean law imposes prison terms of up to three years for sharing information on how to manufacture firearms—a penalty even stricter than Japan’s one-year maximum introduced after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a homemade gun.

Neither content creators nor the platforms hosting such content face real accountability. Why is YouTube exempt? In the 2016 Opaesan incident, a police officer was killed with a homemade gun by a shooter who also confessed to learning the method online. These tragedies continue to occur in the absence of fundamental regulatory reform.

Other countries take a much firmer stance. In Germany, platforms can be fined up to 50 million euros (about 70 billion won) if they fail to remove illegal content within 24 hours. The United Kingdom imposes penalties of up to 10 percent of a platform’s annual revenue, while Australia enforces fines starting at 500 million won. These countries view platforms as “responsible managers,” not merely neutral conduits of information.

South Korea once prided itself on being drug-free, but that status has eroded as narcotics have become accessible even to teenagers. A similar pattern may be emerging with firearms. Without effective regulation of platforms that allow the spread of illegal weapon-making content, it is not unthinkable that guns and explosives could begin appearing in homes across the country. As firearms proliferate, so too does the misguided belief in the necessity of armed self-defense. South Korea must act decisively to prevent such a future.