Unusual terror alert for South Korea’s embassies fuels tensions with North, offers distraction from Yoon’s election loss

Citing intelligence indicating a potential terror threat from Pyongyang, Seoul on Thursday raised its terrorism alert by two levels from the lowest to the third-highest on a four-tier scale.

“The adjustment comes in response to recent intelligence gathered by our agencies, indicating attempts by North Korea to threaten diplomatic staff,” the foreign ministry and the Office for Government Policy Coordination jointly said in a statement.

The terror alert level was raised from “attention” to “alert” for five overseas diplomatic missions. The “alert” level is issued when there is a “high likelihood” of terror attacks taking place, according to the statement.

South Korea’s terrorism alert is classified under four levels: attention, caution, alert and severe.

This is the first time the alert level has been raised by two notches since 2009, when the warning was enhanced from “caution” to the highest “severe” level as the country prepared for the Asean-Korea Special Summit on the southern island of Jeju.

Terrorism alerts at the highest level were issued during the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics and the 2019 Asean-South Korea Summit in the southern city of Busan.

According to the South Korean spy agency the National Intelligence Service (NIS) on the latest situation, the North has deployed agents to step up surveillance on Seoul’s diplomatic missions and identify targets for possible terror attacks.

Many North Koreans, including “a considerable number of diplomats” were said to have disappeared after Pyongyang last year lifted years of a pandemic lockdown and ordered them to return home.

North Korean officials in charge of their country’s expatriates are suspected of shifting the blame to the South to evade accountability for what