Soldiers at Camp Casey, the U.S. Army's base in Sorth Korea, ended their day Thursday — just days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's regime threatened to send a special "Christmas gift" to the United States — with the shrill sounds of an air raid siren instead of the notes of "Taps."
Army Lt. Col. Martyn Crighton, a spokesman for the 2nd Infantry Division, said the siren was sounded over the South Korea base's announcement system at 10 p.m. through "human error," reports The Washington Post.
Crighton wouldn't confirm that a video posted on Twitter through a popular digital hangout for soldiers, purportedly from a Camp Casey solder, had come from Thursday night's incident.
Soldiers talking in a Reddit thread posted about the "stupid false alarm," said military personnel at the base, which is considered a prime target considering its proximity to North Korea, were "riled up" and that some ran, dressed in full uniform, through the base's halls before it was determined that there had been a mistake.
Crighton said soldiers were immediately notified that there had been a mistake and measures were put in place to make sure it would not happen again.
It has not been made clear how the incident occurred, but it appears similar to the time in 2018 when an emergency management agency operator in Hawaii accidentally sent out an alarm to warn that a nuclear missile strike was imminent. Tensions with North Korea were also high at that time.
The North Korean regime has given the United States until the end of this month to drop its "hostile policy."
"The DPRK has done its utmost with maximum perseverance not to backtrack from the important steps it has taken on its own initiative," Ri Thae Song, vice foreign minister in charge of U.S. affairs, said in a statement through the state-run Korean Central News Agency. "What is left to be done now is the U.S. option, and it is entirely up to the U.S. what Christmas gift it will select to get."
The alarm also came after Japan issued a false alert on Thursday saying that North Korea had fired a missile that landed in waters east of Japan's coastline, reports the Daily Mail. The report was retracted 23 minutes later, but MIT professor Vipin Narang tweeted that such a false alarm could "start a war."
The original warning from Pyongyang still has not been ruled out, with experts saying the threat could continue through New Year's Day.
Gen. Charles Brown, the U.S. Air Force general and commander of Pacific Air Forces, said he expects the "gift" to be a long-range ballistic missile test.
CNN, however, said the "gift" could be a new hardline policy rather than an actual missile.
New construction has been seen at a North Korean missile site, adding to the growing tension between the two countries.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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