A threatening fax claiming that explosives were planted at middle and high schools in Incheon and Busan led to students evacuating.
According to police on the 8th, a threatening fax claiming that explosives were planted was received at a middle school in the Mandeok-dong area of Busan's Buk-gu around 9:30 a.m. The school official who received the fax reported it to the police around 10:30 a.m. and evacuated 560 students. Police and firefighters dispatched an initial response team to search the scene but determined that there were no hazardous materials around 11:50 a.m.
At a similar time, a similar fax was also received at a middle school in the Suyeong-gu area of Busan. This school did not evacuate its students separately. Both the school and the police initial response team searched for explosives but also found nothing.
In Incheon, around 10 a.m., police received reports that two high schools in Ganghwa-gun and one high school in Seo-gu received threatening faxes in the name of a Japanese lawyer claiming explosives were planted. It was reported that two of these three schools had received similar faxes on the 29th of last month. One of the high schools that received a threatening fax last month conducted regular classes, while the other two had students evacuated to the playground for about an hour. Police dispatched personnel to these schools that day and conducted searches, but no explosives were found.
The faxes received by these schools were all sent under the name of a Japanese lawyer, and similar incidents have been reported in other areas recently. Threats in the name of a Japanese lawyer regarding the installation of explosives have occurred more than 50 times since 2023, and all were found to be pranks or copycat crimes. In response, the police are conducting an international joint investigation.