An evacuation order erroneously sent to Seoul residents after a North Korean missile launch sent panic in the South Korean capital on Wednesday, raising doubts about the authorities’ ability to respond in the event of an actual attack.
“Catriots, prepare for evacuation and allow children and the elderly to be evacuated first,” said the alarming message, accompanied by a loud ringing and received by South Korean citizens at 06:41 on all mobile phones in Seoul.
The message did not specify why this alert was sent or where the citizens were supposed to go. But Seoul has long had a network of underground shelters that were never used in an actual emergency.
South Korea’s largest internet portal, Navir, was disrupted due to the pressure of netizens after receiving the warning.
Twenty minutes later, he sent a second alert saying “We inform you that the alert sent at 06.41 hours was transmitted incorrectly”.
The incident led to panic and a large number of Seoul residents expressed their anger on social networks, with some even calling for the mayor’s resignation.
“I took my two young children to the underground car park as they advised me. I was in shock,” a 37-year-old father told AFP. He added that the second message, which cancels the warning, “stunned and angered him.”
– “false alert”
The same man said, “Now when a real alarm bell sounds, no one will believe it, like the story of the boy who was asking to be saved from the wolf.”
The alert was sent after North Korea launched a missile carrying a spy satellite that crashed into the Yellow Sea due to a technical problem. But the South Korean military said the projectile did not threaten Seoul at all and did not pass over the area.
“It was a space launch over the sea,” Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said on Twitter.
He added, “It’s like Japan issuing the alarm and calling on everyone to go to the shelters every time South Korea launches a space.”
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon defended his decision, saying that his administration “considers that immediate action is necessary” after the launch.
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