• Seoul, a plaque bearing the phrase “Women Friendly Seoul” can be found outside the women’s lavatory at a train stop.
• A young woman who worked at the station was viciously murdered last week inside the lavatory.
• She had been stalked for years by the man who is thought to have killed her.

 In the capital of South Korea, Seoul, a plaque bearing the phrase “Women Friendly Seoul” can be found outside the women’s lavatory at a train stop.

The phrases, which were intended to reassure women of their safety, have taken on a fatal irony. A young woman who worked at the station was viciously murdered last week inside the lavatory. She had been stalked for years by the man who is thought to have killed her.

Since then, people of all ages have flocked to the wall beneath the inscription to vent their rage, fear, and sorrow, transforming it into a shrine of notes left as messages.

One of them reads, “I want to be alive at the conclusion of my workday.” Is it unreasonable to want that I have the safety to reject those I don’t like?

While looking over the texts, the mother of the teenage girl sobs. She wonders, now debating whether to let her daughter go to school by herself, “Where have we gone so wrong?”

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