I am wondering who is paying for all the food for all the refugees they have living in the airport:
Some 150 foreigners live in a 30-person deportation room of Incheon International Airport. They spend their days in the windowless room watching TV channels broadcast in Korean, or sleeping on benches or floors. [JOONGANG ILBO]Some 150 foreigners are trapped in a single room in Incheon International Airport after their attempts to enter Korea were blocked. They have access to toilets and showers, and are given one blanket each. They eat fast food sandwiches and Coca-Cola – three times a day.
They may be here for a while.
“There is no way we are going to return to our country, which is still at war,” said 28 Syrians caught at the airport in a lawsuit filed in the Incheon District Court last month. It called for a revocation of the immigration office’s rejection of their refugee-status applications.
The 28 Syrians are sharing the 470-square-meter (5,060-square-foot) deportation room with people from nine other countries who have been refused entry, including Thailand, China, Egypt, Kazakhstan and Pakistan. The room is designed for 30 people.
Omar Muhammad (a pseudonym) is one of the Syrians trapped in the terminal. Since leaving the Aleppo region last December, Omar transited through Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates and then flew on to Korea. All of what he has seen of Korea is the eastern end of Incheon airport.
The immigration office at the airport decided not to submit his refugee-status application to the Ministry of Justice for “lack of clear reason for entry” into South Korea.
“Often, we cannot determine the exact reason for the applicants leaving their home country, and the airport needs to filter these applicants out,” a Justice Ministry official said. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Police have apprehended a suspect who allegedly planted a fake explosive device with a threatening letter written in Arabic at Incheon International Airport.
The Incheon International Airport Police said Thursday that they detained the 36-year-old Korean man, surnamed Yu, at 11:30 p.m., Wednesday, at his home in Guro, Seoul.
The action came five days after he left the package containing a butane gas canister in a men’s bathroom at the airport on Jan. 29.
“Yu admitted that he made the box at home based on methods described in a film, and left it in the restroom,” Chung Sung-chae, head of the airport police, said in a press briefing. “He said he did so out of a grudge toward society.” [Korea Times]
A threat memo found at Incheon International Airport, released by the police on Jan. 31, 2016, says in Arabic, “This is the last warning to you. God will punish.” The memo was found on Jan. 29 at the airport, the country’s main gateway, west of Seoul, inside a box that initially was suspected of carrying explosives. It was later found to hold two butane canisters taped to a water bottle. The memo was printed and had grammatical errors, according to the police. (Photo provided by the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency) (Yonhap)
Reading the details of this bomb found at Incheon International Airport makes it sound like this may have been more of a hoax then some warning from a Islamic extremist group. I am sure the ROK authorities are scouring over video footage to try and pin point who left the device and hopefully we will get answer soon:
Police said Saturday that they have found a warning message written in Arabic inside a box recently discovered at South Korea’s main airport that raised terror alarms in the country.
The message, which was written in Arabic on a sheet of paper half the size of A4, reads, “This is the last warning to you. God will punish.”
It was not a handwritten but a printed sentence with some grammatical errors, according to the police, who suspected that it could have been translated by a computer program or by a person whose Arabic skill is not that good.
The discovery was announced a day after the police found a box suspected to contain explosive devices in a men’s bathroom in Incheon International Airport.
The area was cordoned off, but no explosives or detonators were found, just with two butane canisters and one bottled water taped to it.
Also found inside the box, along with the warning message, were guitar strings, electric cords, batteries and some pieces of vegetables, the police said. [Yonhap]
A huge pileup due to foggy weather on the bridge leading from Incheon International Airport to Seoul has killed two people and injured dozens more:
Two people were killed and more than 60 others were injured on Wednesday as more than 100 vehicles piled up on a bridge near Incheon International Airport in foggy weather, police said.
The collision took place at 9:34 a.m. on the Seoul-bound side of the bridge linking the western port city with an island where the airport, South Korea’s main gateway, is located.
A total of 63 people were injured and taken to nearby hospitals. Ten of them were in serious condition, while two were in critical condition, authorities said.
Of the injured, seven were Chinese, three Thai, two Vietnamese and two Filipino. The other four foreign nationals were Japanese, Russian, Bangladeshi and Swiss, respectively.
One of the two Vietnamese victims was in serious condition, firefighters said.
The bodies of the two victims have been moved to hospitals in Goyang, a northern Seoul suburb, and western Incheon, respectively, police said. They were identified only as a 51-year-old surnamed Kim and a 46-year-old surnamed Lim.
Police said a taxi in the first lane bumped another taxi in front of it into the second lane. An airport limousine bus ran into the second taxi, causing a mass collision of cars behind it. [Yonhap]
