The Korean Government tested an air-raid siren in central Seoul at 2 p.m. today.
That is all.
Updated
Just heard want sounded like jet flying at low speed close to the ground. I’m going to make a logical leap an guess it might be a ROK jetfighter if they have such things. Don’t know for sure. I am not too spooked because all this happened at 2 p.m. instead of, say, 2:37 a.m.. I am unnerved a bit because my co-workers said, “It’s not normal.” The only reason I can imagine the Korean government would be spooked is because Americans may start making it much more difficult for Mr. Kim to drink expensive booze.
Update # 2
Here we go again. This one 2:15. One long sound. Co-workers said it was “building protection” related. Which, I assume means, “If this is not a test, GET THE HELL OUT OF YOUR BUILDING!”
Update #3
Waiting for 2:30 p.m. Can we make it a three-fer? Still unsure as to how much lag time we would have between Kim Jong-Il pushing the big red “go” button and us hearing shells land in Seoul. I’ve heard everything from 48 hours to two weeks.
Update #4
Be not afraid. Just the usual stuff that I should have known about beforehand. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
28 Comments
Hey, great minds think alike. Your post beat mine by a few seconds.
Freaked me to hear a couple jets flying over my place on the east side of Seoul a few mins. ago. We almost never get air traffic here apart from the occasional helicopter. I haven’t seen fighter aircraft over Seoul for a long time. When I first got here in ‘95 they were doing the monthly drills and seeing fighters skidding through the sky next to my classroom was a lot of fun — NOT.
Life is interesting again.
Kepp your panties dry there, grasshopper.
Traditionally, the South Koreans hold these drills quarterly, on the 15th of the month. If the 15th falls on a weekend, then they hold it on the following monday - at 2pm. Used to be monthly before the sunstupid policy kicked in. Once in a while they actually fly aircraft over the capital to spruce things up.
Technically, people were supposed to leave the streets and seek shelter. I doubt they do that anymore. Anyway, I am sure it raised the pucker factor for those who were caught unaware
I am well aware that some expats shrug off such things and titter at people who get spooked. While I understand that sentiment and have been here long enough to know better, the a-bomb thing and having Robert spooked to is enough to feel justified in being a wee bit anxious.
Just for the record, if you see the white flags with the yellow and green triangles on it that means there will be a drill coming up in the next few days.
Well, gooneybird, what you ought to do with this feeling of being spooked is take the opportunity to assess your evacuation plan: How are you going to get out of the city when/if the worst does come to pass? Where are you heading, anyway? (Or should you just stay put?) The subway out to Kimpo is probably going to be oversubscribed. If you had to walk to Taegu, how would you get there? And how would you pay for the various things you’ll need along the way? You should have an evac bag with extra skivvies and a couple pairs of socks, an extra shirt or two, a jacket to keep warm with, a supply of greenbacks and Korean won, a big bottle of water, and some meals (a week’s worth). Decent walking shoes are a must. You’re lucky it’s just you, Mr. Bum — I’ve got hangers-on and they won’t be carrying much of their own crap.
In addition to what yankeesfan_77 and Stef wrote, This was well advertised on TV, Radio, and print. You should have been very aware.
Also, there was no “A-bomb” anything. There is a huge difference between a failed nuclear explosion and an “a-bomb.”
This is my last comment on this post. I sense the natives want a piece of flesh to munch on.
I can not read or understand Korean. I do not watch TV. Period. I have little or no direct contact with the Korean media world outside of a brief glance at the KT or KH. Ergo, my concern. I am aware they have regular drills, I just wasn’t expecting this one.
In the future, I will be sure to only be concerned if I actually see the hot glow of an a-bomb on my retina before I post anything about drills of any sort.
Brendon Carr , that’s wise advice. People who live in Seoul really will need a clean pair of underwear if they survive the scuds, the artillery shells, and the biological and chemical weapons.
The Scuds aren’t going to be much of a threat. Biological/chemical weapons are, I imagine, based on my experience in military intelligence, overstated. In a career Army, there’s no general with the courage to say, “The threat is not what we said it is” because that means “I’ve been wasting my time here.” The artillery is an issue and artillery shells will cause a hell of a lot of damage in the opening rounds. But counterbattery fire will be devastating and will quickly silence the North Koreans.
And then the rollback begins.
that’s right yankeesfan_77,
done quarterly now, on the fifteenth unless it’s a weekend. i was in the US embassy for the one in april on a monday. absolutely nothing changes in seoul anymore. the cars don’t even seem to stop. without attendant explosions there is no need for worry.
for americans or their spouses who haven’t prepared for an evacuation scenario:
http://seoul.usembassy.gov/wwwh3597.html
I was simply making the point that the North would probably unload everything it’s got on Seoul, and Seoul only (might lob a few missiles on some nuclear power stations, though). The North Korean’s might be quickly silenced, but you’d be lucky to survive if you are in Seoul. Oh, and based on my own military and scientific experience, I’d say scuds loaded with sarin gas, anthrax, or napalm don’t have to be precise or numerous to kill.
Are you scared yet? Who’s scared? Am I scared?
You’re a wuss, coz you’re scared!
You’re stupid and naive coz you’re not scared?
How fun to cast judgement on the scale of fear we designate to the threat of our northern neigbours. Detached form the fear mongering the US, (Did you buy your anti Saddam gas mask?) how easily can we really judge the madness of KJI? The view of the North seems to be entirely debatable when comparing and contrasting the reaction of the South, US media, well informed experts, US soldiers, NEA geopolitcal experts and the rest.
Hey, I do my best to keep informed. Seeing as I’m not a fly on the wall in KJI’s mansion and have very little idea like everyone else as to what could trigger the North. I’m playing my cards safe. I have my tank full and emergency pack ready to go. On making a cost benefits calculation on being in Korea (like it or not there’s one to be made) other’s have probably A. Decided against coming here or B. Decided against staying or probably even C. Have packed up and left based on the threat. Call the judgement of those people what you will, (I’m not running out to buy a plane ticket anytime soon) but should shit hit the fan, I know what I’m what I’m going to do.
So please have a nice big hot cup of STFU and act like it
Having lived in Korea for a long time and still ignorant about so much (really I never thought about the flags), I am a little surprised that this drill caught me so much off-guard. I think it had something to do with the chats I had last night with family in the States. Regardless, it has been a long time since my area of Seoul has been subject to one of these drills and I don’t remember the jets being part of the last one. I did a quick check of the top three English dailies and found no references to the drills in any of them - I would think, considering the uneasiness of many in the foreign community - that someone would have thought of placing that little reminder in one of the papers. Remember - it is a matter of timing.
Kerr - are you sure you are going anywhere? I always thought you and I would be forced to head to the nearest armory and draw our M16s (that’s right - you were a Zoomie so let me explain it for you - it is the big stick-like thing that you used to fire once or twice in basic and then let someone else clean) and head to some unit. {This is naturally all said in fun}
Gotta go and see if I can find some skivvies…
It’s lucky the TV didn’t go off at the same time like it did at the weekend:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com.....09041.html
not that I would have noticed either.
Correction - that should have been Carr - keep getting you mixed up with the other guy involved in court - the guy that was in Thailand and then went to Colorado, followed by a short stay in California and …..
Shelton…. You said, “I can not read or understand Korean.” You have been here long enough to read and understand a great deal of Korean.. Your ignorance is willful. Therefore, I have no sympathy for your feelings of fear and dread. If anything, you should be too ashamed and embarrassed to post about how your voluntarily ignorance of your host country’s language resulted in your being scared silly over something that happens on a regular basis.
Robert (Neff), you are not the only one. It seems that pawikirogi quite willfully sows confusion on the area. He’s got me as a kiddie-diddler down in Thailand while at the same time holding down a job here in Seoul.
I was in Korea for one drill a couple of years ago…come to think of it, I think it was the October drill. Where I was in Daegu, all the traffic stopped and people stopped walking, although no one headed inside. And there were planes overhead.
It caught me by surprise mainly because I’d read in older books how it was a monthly affair but since it’d had never happened when I was there, I thought they’d been dropped, rather than being scaled back to quarterly affairs.
The next day, the Chosun Ilbo (I think it was) ran castigating headlines and shame-inducing photos of people blithely going about their business during the drill.
This post is highly amusing…poor Shelton gets spooked, and all of the most jaded fellows on this board pop up to ridicule him for it. “Geez, it’s just the air raid drill,” I thought, too, but seeing as even Andy and Robert (whom no one here would accuese of being naive) were spooked as well, cut Shelton a little slack. Still, though, I’m pretty sure air raid drills are mentioned in the Lonely Planet Korea guide (unless recent editions don’t mention it), and there’s no excuse for not reading Lonely Planet.
That’s just lame.
Shelton: At least try to watch the KBS 9 o’clock news, or similar program of your choice. I’ll be quite honest and admit that I can’t understand even half of what’s being said, but from the images and translating the captions in the graphics, you can get a gist of what’s being talked about. (All the more so if you know something about the story ahead of time from the English papers.) At the very least, you will get more accustomed to hearing Korean used in a wider variety of situations—especially formal Korean, as that’s what used. And whenever there are stories from the provinces, you get to hear an array of dialects among interview subjects.
For bonus points, as a blogger, it’ll give you a feel for what the hot topics of the day are among Koreans.
When I first came to Korea, cars and pedestrians still got off the roads and sidewalks. The drills also seemed longer.
Everything comes to a standstill during air raid drills in Daegu. Maybe they take it more seriously down there in conservative Gyeongsang-do.
I should correct myself…cars don’t actually get off the roads: they just pull over and stop. I was inside when the drill started, so when I came out to the road (not knowing what was going on, until I was motioned by an ajeossi to stop and wait on the sidewalk), all I could see were what I thought were parked cars. As I recall, there were police (or civil defense-type?) cars driving up and down checking up on things.
When the drill ended, suddenly this mass stream of cars emerged all at once from the side of the road, and traffic returned to normal. It was a really weird sight!
Give Shelton a break on the you-can’t-understand-Korean-you-moron bulls**t. I can’t stand waygooks who school others. And like me, maybe he has better things to do than watch tv.
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[...] I would feel really stupid about not knowing there was a drill coming up, if it weren’t for a lot of expats who’ve been here longer than we have and they didn’t know about it either. Although it was announced on Korean television and radio, notification didn’t seem to make it to the English-language media. I guess we’ll try not to read too much into that. [...]
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