By Kim Se-jeong
Police are looking for a caller who threatened to blow up Cheong Wa Dae early Sunday morning.
The Public Relations Office at Cheong Wa Dae received five calls ― the first at 2:39 a.m. ― early in the morning from the same person.
The caller’s number had a French country code, police said.
“If you don’t show your will to do what I want by noon today, I will bomb Cheong Wa Dae,” the caller was quoted as saying by police. However, he did not elaborate on what he wanted.
Incoming call numbers are easily manipulated, police said, adding that they are investigating all leads. “It’s possible the caller is in Korea,” one officer said.
This is the second bomb threat Cheong Wa Dae has received in two weeks.
On Jan. 17, the police found a twitter message saying Park’s private residence was to be bombed at 2 p.m. that day. The twitter message had an address, which turned out to be a chicken restaurant in Paris.
Police are not ruling out the possibility that the twitter user and the caller are identical.
The military raised its alert level near the presidential office Sunday. The military and the police Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit said they had run an immediate inspection near Cheong Wa Dae and did not find anything suspicious.
The threat on Cheong Wa Dae went viral among Internet users.
“I am curious why people in France want to threaten Cheong Wa Dae?” one wrote. Others wrote “A high alert for the police and the military?”; “Hope everything is ok”; and “Is it a coincidence that it’s from France?”