SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s launch of a spy satellite on Wednesday ended in an embarrassing failure, but still prompted public confusion and…
A woman looks at her mobile phone with an emergency evacuation warning text message sent to Seoul residents as she watches a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, May 31, 2023. North Korea’s attempt to put the country’s first spy satellite into space failed Wednesday in a setback to leader Kim Jong Un’s push to boost his military capabilities as tensions with the United States and South Korea rise. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
About 14 minutes after the launch at 6:27 a.m., authorities in Seoul, South Korea’s capital, sent text messages to all mobile phones in the city urging people to prepare to move to safer places, without explaining the reason. In some areas, the warning was broadcast over loudspeakers.
Then, about 22 minutes later, the Interior and Safety Ministry sent messages to Seoul residents saying the earlier warning was sent in error. Ministry officials said it was only intended for people living on a front-line island off the west coast that is closer to the rocket’s flight path, and that a warning had been sent to them at 6:29 a.m.
Seoul, a city of 10 million people, is only an hour’s drive from the heavily fortified border with rival North Korea. It would only take a few minutes for forward-deployed North Korean missiles to reach Seoul.
But it’s extremely rare for South Korea to issue such missile alerts, even though North Korea has conducted more than 100 missile tests in the past 17 months. Wednesday’s text messages were only the third of their kind since 2016.
