Police are tracking down the sender of an email threatening a bomb terror attack at Seoul’s Gocheok Sky Dome, where a U.S. Major League Baseball (MLB) opening game is scheduled to take place Wednesday.
Police said they received a report from an employee at South Korea’s Consulate General in Vancouver of Canada at around 6 a.m. about the email threatening to detonate a bomb during the match between the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgers to hurt superstar Shohei Ohtani and others.
The email was written in English and the writer claimed to be a Japanese lawyer, and officials are trying to check whether it was sent from Japan.
Police suspect the email could be from the same individual behind a series of email and fax bomb threats from Japan last year. The sender at the time also claimed to be a Japanese lawyer, and showed similarities in format and content to the bomb threat Wednesday, officials said.
Police are tracking down the sender and deployed 30 commandos and 120 personnel to search the stad
ium. But no dangerous or suspicious situation has been found.
Wednesday’s game will open the 2024 MLB season. It is the very first MLB game in South Korea.
In light of the threat, security staff at the stadium conducted more thorough checks at the entrance than previous days. When officials and media members checked in, security officials tried to match the face of the holder to the one that popped up on their credential scanner.
One security staff member said some officials had been caught trying to walk in with another person’s credentials previously.
Source: Yonhap News Agency