A teenager who repeatedly made false threats, including saying explosives would be planted at Seoul Station and other multiuse facilities, was sentenced to prison. An accomplice was fined.
On the 24th, Criminal Division 5 single-judge panel of the Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Court (Judge Hwang Ji-hyun) sentenced A, a 17-year-old boy indicted and detained on charges including public intimidation, to two years in prison with a one-year minimum term.
Under the Juvenile Act, the court imposed an indeterminate sentence with upper and lower limits. If the defendant maintains exemplary conduct during the minimum term, the person can be released before the maximum term expires after an evaluation by correctional authorities.
Prosecutors said A is accused of giving 17 advance warnings of attacks on multiuse facilities, including the headquarters of KT and Kakao, Toss Bank, and Seoul Station, by impersonating others from December last year to February this year.
A used a virtual private network (VPN) to route through overseas IP addresses and wrote posts under others' names, threatening to blow up corporations' headquarters or harm the chief executive officer (CEO), it was found. A also demanded large sums be transferred to a specific account.
Accomplice B, a 15-year-old boy who aided the crime by providing someone else's mobile phone and account number to A, was fined 8 million won for inciting the offense.
The court said, "The defendants' crimes caused anxiety and harm to an unspecified large number of people, and a security service gap was inevitable as many police personnel were mobilized."