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A student stabbed three people in a knife attack at a South Korean high school Monday morning and injured two others, police said.

The attack happened around 8:36 am at a school in Cheongju, 110 kilometers south of Seoul, according to police reports.

Police received a report that "a student had stabbed someone in a classroom with a knife," Chungbuk Provincial Police Agency said in a statement sent to reporters.

Three people were seriously injured, including the school's headmaster, who suffered an abdominal stab wound, and a government employee who was stabbed in his chest.

Police said two other people suffered minor injuries.

The student attempted to flee to a nearby lakeside park, where he jumped into the lake, but was apprehended just 12 minutes after the initial report, according to Cheongju police.

The 18-year-old was taken to a hospital as he suffered minor injuries.

"We are trying to determine the details and motive," a local police official told AFP.

The case comes just months after a teacher fatally stabbed an eight-year-old student at an elementary school in South Korea.

However, South Korea is generally a very safe country, with a murder rate of 1.3 per 100,000 people in 2021, according to official statistics -- below the global average of six homicide deaths per 100,000 people.

© Agence France-Presse