Woman Stabs Three People on Subway After Being Called an “Ajumma”

The word “ajumma” is supposedly no longer acceptable to say in polite Korean society and one woman took her offense to the term to the extreme by launching a knife attack after being called it on the subway:

A 37-year-old woman accused of injuring three people with a knife on a subway told police that she did so because someone called her “ajumma,” police said Saturday.

The accused, whose identity was withheld, is charged with injuring two women in her 60s and a man in his 50s inside a subway train headed to Jukjeon Station in the city of Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.

According to the subway police, the accused was speaking on the phone when one of the two women asked her to lower her voice, calling her “ajumma,” which she said offended her.

Although the word, “ajumma,” is a casual way of referring to a middle-aged woman who is unrelated to the speaker — coming from the more polite word, “ajumeoni” — it has grown to have a negative connotation over the years among Koreans.

One of the victims underwent surgery, although none of the injuries were fatal.

Korea Herald via a reader tip

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