It was 6:32 am on Wednesday morning when South Korea’s capital was awakened by high-pitched air raid sirens followed by a wartime alert that urged residents to prepare for an emergency evacuation. South Koreans, who have over many years become desensitized to frequent provocations from the North, were startled as news that Pyongyang had fired a rocket spread like wildfire across the city of 10 million. Accompanied by North Korea’s prior warning that it would launch its first military reconnaissance satellite between May 31 and June 11 and at a time of heightened tension in the region, the rare government alert left citizens worried about an imminent attack and so terrified that a Seoul resident even “thought of the situation in Ukraine” and told NK News that “I panicked with fear of possibly losing my husband in a war. I held onto him and cried.”

FALSE ALARM

The Korean-language notification was short and abrupt. The message warned residents to give priority to children and the elderly during evacuation, but made no mention of what triggered the alert, how people should prepare, or where the evacuation areas were. Lee Ju-yeon, a resident from Seoul, described that “I was so panicked. 911 lines were busy and the internet was slow … So without knowing what was really happening, I was about to head down to a basement wearing a wrap carrier with my baby.” Foreigners visiting Seoul also complained that they were confused as the evacuation order was in Korean, “I didn’t get it of course, but I was nervous,” said Blake Fuentes Glibert, a Mexican tennis player visiting South Korea for a tournament.

It took the South Korean government 22 minutes before recalling the warning as an “error” and reassuring Seoul residents that the city was safe. Upon learning that the alert was triggered by North Korea’s failed attempt to launch its spy satellite into space to monitor U.S. and South Korean military activities, which Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, later announced plans to relaunch the satellite in the “near future,” the public’s confusion and anxiety soon turned into anger and exasperation. Seoul resident, Chung Sung-hee, described the chaotic experience of realizing that the loudspeaker broadcast denoted a “real situation,” rather than a drill. “They should’ve said what was happening, and where to go … Who would evacuate with a message like that,” she added that she could not help but curse the authorities when the second alert explained that it was a false alarm.

UNPREPARED FOR WAR

While Yoon’s administration was criticized for championing a tough stance against Pyongyang on the one hand, yet failing to handle major crises and assure its people of its safety on the other hand, this false alarm also highlighted the fact that modern day Seoul is unprepared to respond to a real emergency. As Ahn Byong-jin, a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in Seoul commented, “there has been little training for the general public on how to live with it. The commotion we had this morning encapsulates how the government is failing to understand and respond to this new normal with North Korea.”

Moreover, repeated alerts falsely triggered by its nuclear-armed northern neighbor over the years have conditioned many disinterested South Koreans to ignore both real and apparent threats of war. “One of my colleagues told me that she heard the alert while washing her hair, but just dismissed it thinking it’s just another one of many news alerts about North Korea missiles,” explained an apparel company worker from Seoul. Meanwhile, keywords relating to “alerts” and “evacuation” became the most searched topics on Twitter in South Korea, with a user tweeting “Hey guys, given Twitter is still working, I guess it is not war.” Even though air raid sirens and wartime alerts are rare, false alarms akin to Wednesday’s alert could potentially further desensitize people to disregard future evacuation orders, which are widely expected to normalize going forward, as the country remains technically at war seven decades after the Korean War ended.