Out of all autopsies performed in Korea less than 1 per cent is related to firearms. Deaths due to firearms can usually be seen in the military, and a large portion of these deaths are due to suicides.
The part of the body one selects to commit suicide differs on which type of firearms used. This study was based on M16A1 semi-automatic military rifle. There was a total of 379 postmortem examination cases performed by the ministry of National
Defense
Scientific Investigation Laboratory between January of 1981 and October of 1983.
Out of the 379 postmortem examination cases, 70 were related to firearms, and the manners of death, firearm types, the number of shots fired, ratio of penetration to perforation gunshots, and the areas around the entrance wounds were
investigated.
Out of these 70 cases, 64 cases were due to M16A1, and 58 of them were due to suicides. Of the suicide cases, anterior neck (hyoid bone area) was the part of the body most often selected.
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