A Comparative Synthesis of American and Korean Parricidal Mass Murders

Contemporary studies of mass murder have examined attacks carried out by current or former students in educational settings or disgruntled employees at former places of work. Recently conceptualized as “active shooter events,” this type of public mass killing has eclipsed the most pervasive one throughout the twentieth century: mass killings within the family. The dearth of scholarly work on mass killings in the context of parricides in other national and cultural contexts is notable given the salience of family killings in the homicide literature. Using previously published findings on parricides in nineteenth-century America and twentieth-century Korea, this paper provides a comparative synthesis of parricidal mass murders—mass killings that occur during the course of parricides. Notable points of convergence and divergence are discussed relative to culture and offense characteristics.