Police are investigating emails threatening to blow up the Supreme Prosecutors Office, universities and government offices in the fourth email bomb threat believed to have been sent from Japan, officials said Wednesday.
Seoul City Hall alerted police Wednesday morning that it received two emails the previous day with threats to detonate explosives at the Supreme Prosecutors Office, the city halls in Busan, Daegu, Suwon and Hwaseong, and several universities, including Seoul National University, according to the police.
The emails also said 270 million explosives had already been planted and would be set off Wednesday and Thursday. Police searched the locations subject to the threats but didn't find any explosives, the officials said.
The emails were sent in the name of a Japanese law firm with the same address as the one used for the three previous bomb threats received in the country in recent weeks and could be related to an email phishing scam prevalent in Japan, the sources said.
The cybercrime investigation team of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency suspects that all four emails were sent by the same person and is taking steps to ask Japanese police for cooperation in the investigation, the officials said.
On July 7, an email was delivered to a number of people, including officials in the Seoul metropolitan government, threatening to detonate a bomb at a library in the capital if opposition leader Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party (DP) was not killed by 3:34 p.m. Some emails also targeted the N Seoul Tower, the National Museum of Korea, the Japanese School in Seoul and the Embassy of Japan.
The police on Monday searched Seoul City Hall after an email containing bomb threats was received, saying high-powered bombs were planted in several places within the building and that the blast time was 3:34 p.m. on Tuesday, but they found no explosives in the area.
Source: Yonhap News Agency