An evacuation order mistakenly sent to residents of Seoul after North Korea launched a rocket caused panic in the South Korean capital on Wednesday, raising doubts about the authorities’ ability to react in the event of a real offensive. “Citizens, prepare to evacuate and allow children and the elderly to evacuate first” was the disturbing message, accompanied by a shrill ringing, received at 6:41 a.m. by all cell phones from Seoul.
The message did not specify why this alert was sent or where citizens were supposed to go. Seoul has long had a network of underground shelters, but in living memory they have never been used in an actual emergency. South Korea’s largest Internet portal, Naver, fell due to excessive traffic generated by the alert. “We are informing you that the alarm sent at 6:41 a.m. was issued incorrectly,” said a second alert sent about 20 minutes later.
The incident has caused fear, with many Seoul residents expressing their anger on social media, with some even calling on the mayor to resign. “I took my two young children to an underground car park as advised, I was in shock,” a 37-year-old father told AFP. his surname Yoon. As for the second message canceling the alert, it left him “speechless and furious.” “Now when a real alarm goes off, no one will believe it. It’s like the fable of the boy who cried wolf.”
The alert was triggered after North Korea launched a rocket carrying a spy satellite, which crashed into the Yellow Sea due to a technical problem. But the South Korean military said the projectile never threatened Seoul and did not even pass over the region.
“It was a space launch over the sea,” tweeted Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Proliferation Project (EANP) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “It’s like Japan sounding the alarm and asking everyone to go to shelters every time South Korea launches into space,” he commented. Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon defended himself, saying his administration “deemed immediate action was necessary” after the launch. “It may have been an overreaction, but there is no trade-off when it comes to safety,” he told a press conference, while promising to review the alert system. of the city to prevent further confusion.
On the internet, many South Koreans expressed their exasperation with the fiasco. “I almost fainted, because the text alert told us to evacuate without giving really necessary information”, explains an Internet user. “There was a voice announcement outside that I couldn’t even hear. My hands were shaking,” he says.
South Korea remains officially at war with North Korea, the war between the two countries between 1950 and 1953 only ending in an armistice, not a peace treaty. For Minseon Ku, a political science researcher at Ohio State University, Wednesday’s blunder is a symptom of a chronic security problem in the South.
“This snag is unfortunate because with South Korea technically at war right now, it highlights a potential breach in civil security that could pose a real risk,” she told AFP. “It is hoped that this incident will serve to remind local and national authorities that strong and reliable civil security trumps all other considerations.”
For Ankit Panda, another Korea expert based in the United States, this error should lead to an investigation and a revision of South Korea’s operating procedures during the frequent missile tests by its northern neighbor. “False alarms can be particularly dangerous in times of crisis, but they also undermine public confidence in times of peace,” he told AFP.