Nationwide civil defense drill to take place Wednesday

Official English poster for South Korea's civil defense drill scheduled for Wednesday (Ministry of the Interior and Safety)

South Korea will conduct its first nationwide civil defense drill in six years on Wednesday, a move that comes amid rising tensions with North Korea.

Set for 2 p.m., the 20-minute exercise will require most people to evacuate to designated shelters or underground safe spaces. The country has identified 17,000 such shelters, with their locations available on widely-used apps like Kakao, Naver, and Tmap.

During the drill, drivers must pull over to the side of roads and follow radio instructions. Subway station exits will be closed, with all passengers required to stay underground. Several roads in Seoul and other major cities will be shut down for the exercise.

Citizens must remain in shelters for 15 minutes, with an all-clear given at 2:20 pm. Real-time updates about the procedure will be relayed to the public through emergency phone alerts, radio, and TV.

Essential services including hospitals, airlines, railways, subways, and commercial sea traffic will remain unaffected by the drill. Areas recently designated as disaster zones due to heavy rainfall will also be exempt from participating, the Interior Ministry said.

Foreign residents in Seoul are encouraged to participate, with translated leaflets available in locations such as airports and hotels.

The decision to hold the drill comes a month after North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, marking a significant advancement in its rapidly evolving missile program under Kim Jong Un’s leadership.

Seoul, situated only 50 kilometers from the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, is within reach of North Korean artillery and could be susceptible to large-scale bombings.

The civil defense drill was first introduced in 1975 during the period of anticommunist military dictatorship. Monthly evacuation drills were common in South Korea through the 1980s, with residents occasionally asked to black out their homes during nighttime exercises in preparation for possible air raids from the North.

However, following a transition to democracy and a brief detente between the Koreas in the 1990s, these drills have largely lost the rigor they once had.

Nowadays, many South Koreans view threats from Pyongyang as a fact of life and generally do not take these exercises seriously.

A 2022 Interior Ministry survey of 1000 South Koreans found that while 58.2 percent of respondents viewed the situation with North Korea as serious, 61.8 percent felt an all-out war was unlikely. Over half were unaware of the nearest air-raid shelter's location.

By Moon Ki Hoon(kihoon96@heraldcorp.com)