South Korea Calls In Chemical Response Team. File: A special team of South Korean firefighters stage a drill for disasters such as toxic chemical leakage in a power plant in Seoul on April 16, 2013.
KIM JAE-HWAN/AFP via Getty Images
A chemical response team was dispatched to a South Korean airport on Thursday after a passenger bound for New York discovered a suspected “nerve agent” among her belongings.
Authorities at Incheon Airport said they were alerted to a “black powder” contained inside a transparent zipper bag, which the female passenger in her 20s, who was not identified, said she found in her carry-on luggage, reported South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
“I found something like coffee powder in my bag, but it’s not mine,” local media reports quoted her as saying in the transcript of her 6:33 a.m. call to the police.
A team specializing in hazardous materials and an explosive ordnance disposal unit were called to the airport’s departure terminal.
A preliminary investigation on site confirmed that the bag contained 65 grams, or 2.3 ounces, of powder that “could potentially activate people’s nervous systems in a toxic manner,” according to the Korea JoongAng Daily.
The exact compounds were unknown; the “nerve agent” was being analyzed by South Korea‘s military, the newspaper said.
The police said there were no victims of the unidentified powder, and they believed the possibility of biochemical terrorism was low.
The woman’s 9:30 a.m. flight to New York was not delayed, airport authorities said, but the passenger remained behind and was scheduled to depart on Friday.
Incheon, in the country’s northwest, is located about 30 miles south of the demilitarized zone, the de facto inter-Korean border, but there were no immediate public links to Pyongyang.
In 2017, North Korea was accused of using the nerve agent VX to assassinate Kim Jong Nam, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un‘s older half-brother, at Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia.
Kim Jong Nam had been living in exile for over a decade at the time, and he was believed to have been targeted by agents while preparing to board a flight to Macau. He was declared dead 20 minutes later.
Relations between Seoul and Pyongyang have soured in recent years, with the South accusing the North of repeated hacks of sensitive data, in addition to repeated ballistic missile tests otherwise prohibited by the U.N. Security Council.
The North says the South is threatening its national security by conducting pointed military exercises aimed at crippling its regime.
Earlier this month, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry raised the terror alert levels at five overseas missions, citing the possibility of attacks on its diplomats by the North.
The notice out of Seoul said threat monitoring was increased at its embassies in Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, Lao capital Vientiane, and Vietnamese capital Hanoi, as well as at its consulates in Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East and in Shenyang in northeastern China.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry could not be reached for comment.
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This story was originally published May 23, 2024, 5:35 AM.