Basically, the first message urged us all to prepare for evacuation—old people and children first. The second message said the first message had been sent in error.
How's that for a nice wake-up call?
And what did we learn from this, Poison Girls? We learned that, if North Korea starts shelling Seoul or comes pouring across the DMZ in the morning, my lame ass is going to sleep through the attack. So I'll end up shot, gassed, or blown up before I even realize what's going on. Hmm. Maybe that's not so bad.
UPDATE: another message just came in around 7:25 a.m., this time saying the first message (from about 6:30) had been sent in response to North Korea's missile launch. Why this launch prompted such a hysterical response, I have no clue. North Korea launches missiles all the time. At a guess, President Yoon is going to get some shit for waking us up like this.
UPDATE 2: in the comments, Charles makes the point that the emergency message came from Seoul's government, not from the federal government, so my last sentence in the previous update obscured that fact. I still think President Yoon is likely to get flak just because there are elements out there who will blame him no matter what's going on in South Korea (this happened on Yoon's watch, after all), but yes, as Charles points out, it's more likely that Oh Se-hoon, mayor of Seoul, will get the lion's share of the blame. It wasn't Yoon who woke us up; it was probably Oh or his office.
Not President Yoon--you'll notice that the first message is from 서울특별시, which means if anyone is going to get flack, it will be Mayor Oh.
ReplyDeleteNo, I thought of that. Sure, Mayor Oh might catch hell, but I still think President Yoon could get flak for this. This wasn't a national-level emergency announcement, but it was Seoul, heart of the nation. To use a not-so-exaggerated example, it'd be like a mass shooting in France being blamed on Trump. Haters gonna hate.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, my boss, who lives in Suwon, didn't get the Suwon equivalent of that message. My Korean coworker who lives in Gimpo didn't get a message, either. How about your colleagues?
"By the way, my boss, who lives in Suwon, didn't get the Suwon equivalent of that message. My Korean coworker who lives in Gimpo didn't get a message, either."
ReplyDeleteThat's my point--this was a Seoul-centric message put out by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. No one else got it, because there were no equivalent messages. I see what you're saying about Yoon catching flak because he is the president, and you're right that there will definitely be people who will try to blame him for it, but the central government had nothing to do with this. Notice how the second message declaring the first one an 오발령 was from the 행정안전부, and the third message then going on about how it had been sent in response to a missile launch came from the Seoul gov't again. Basically, Seoul screwed the pooch, the central gov't scolded them for it, and then Seoul tried to cover their rear. (I will have an entry inspired by this snafu going up later this evening.)
As for whether my colleagues got the message, I have no idea. I don't generally talk to my colleagues unless we have a rare meeting or something.
I've added clarifications. Hope you're happy.
ReplyDeleteFor what it is worth, this reminds me of the alert which was put out by the government of Hawaii a few years back. It was a similar type of "wartime alert" saying that ICBMs were incoming and you can kiss your ass goodbye. As I recall, the "oops we screwed up" message didn't go out for a number of minutes afterwards. I had some friends out there on vacation at the time and one of them texted her mom to say goodbye before the second message came through.
ReplyDeleteI remember that alert. Fun times. As we now know, if the shit hits the fan here, I won't have the presence of mind to contact you and my brothers right away.
ReplyDelete