Man ordered to pay full damages for fake Shinsegae bomb threat
2 sources · South Korea · 1 of them is linked to a state
Who reported this
- Yonhap
- The Korea Herald
What the colours mean
- Left
- Centre-left
- Centre
- Centre-right
- Right
- A hatched block means the outlet is affiliated with, or controlled by, a state.
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Every source for this story reports from South Korea.
The Seoul Central District Court has ordered a man in his 20s to pay approximately 12.56 million won in damages for wasting police resources after making a hoax bomb threat online. The ruling, announced by the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on Wednesday, requires the man to cover the full cost of the police response, including personnel expenses, overtime allowances, fuel, and meal costs. Police stated that this is the first time a court has recognized a claim for full compensation of public security costs resulting from an online threat.
In August 2025, the man posted a threat on YouTube claiming he would bomb the Shinsegae Department Store. In response, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency deployed 277 personnel to increase patrols around the area. The suspect was eventually tracked and arrested in Hadong.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, online threats have caused repeated large scale operations, with 177 bomb threats reported online in 2025 alone. The agency emphasized that such prank threats result in costs borne by taxpayers and vowed to hold offenders fully accountable for the resulting damage.
How each side framed it
- Centre
- The center lean outlet focused on the legal precedent of the court recognizing full compensation for wasted public security costs.
- Centre-right
- The center-right lean outlet framed the event as a burden on taxpayers and provided broader context regarding the frequency of similar online threats.
Sources
100% of the statements in this article were traced back to the source articles listed above.