75.44 Million Won in ‘Financial Therapy’ Billed to High Schooler for Bomb Hoax: “633 Officers’ Work Wasted on Threat Posts”

According to Financial News, a group led by a high school student surnamed Cho posted fake bomb threats targeting middle and high schools and train stations in areas including Incheon, Gwangju in Gyeonggi Province, and Asan in South Chungcheong Province late last year. As a result, a total of 633 public personnel were mobilized, and 63 hours and 51 minutes of public resources were wasted.
In response, police have decided to seek 75.44 million won in damages from Cho and his accomplices, the highest amount ever claimed since the offense of public intimidation was added to the Criminal Act.
The Dong-A Ilbo reported on the 8th that it had obtained the indictment through Park Kyun-taek, a member of the National Assembly Legislation and Judiciary Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea.
According to the indictment, Cho’s group posted fake threat messages a total of 13 times on online communities between September and October last year. On October 13 alone, they uploaded three separate threats in one day, prompting 113 public officials to carry out a joint search operation.
They sometimes committed the crimes to frame peers they had fallen out with, or after being asked to "get the school to close for the day."
Separately from the criminal trial, the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency convened a Compensation Review Committee on the 30th of last month and resolved to claim 75.44 million won from Cho and his group. The amount covers dispatch costs, fuel expenses, and other losses caused by the fake threats. It is the largest claim since the offense of public intimidation was introduced into the Criminal Act in March last year.
The figure was calculated by adding the hourly labor costs based on the average pay grade of the personnel dispatched by rank, the fuel costs for the vehicles used, and the expenses for special equipment consumed during the response. If a compensation order is issued and Cho fails to pay, delay damages will continue to accrue even after he becomes an adult, and his parents could face seizure of their assets for failing to supervise him.
Police stated that, to prevent waste of administrative resources and deter copycat crimes, they will continue to actively seek compensation for damages in cases involving false reports.
Investigators also found that Cho and his accomplices mocked the authorities and grew confident about evading investigation as they watched police and fire services being mobilized in response to their fake threats.
Cho and others sneered in conversations such as, "We just posted a few bullshit messages and it’s hilarious watching those cop bastards and fire trucks and SWAT teams running around," and "Why are the cops working so hard? They were patrolling the area all day yesterday." They also boasted, "We’ll use a virtual private network (VPN) and wipe the hard drive on a dedicated device so we can destroy the evidence cleanly," expressing confidence they could avoid investigation.
The investigation further revealed that Cho’s group operated in a way similar to a criminal organization, with a structured division of roles including a ringleader, threat-message writers, and callers. They also wrote fake threat posts under the names of peers they had fallen out with, in an attempt to pin the crimes on them.
y27k@fnnews.com Seo Yoon-kyung Reporter