Seoul Station gets bomb threat as rail strike enters 8th day

(ATTN: ADDS probe into 39-year-old man in 5th para; UPDATES with union's decision to
conditionally end walkout in 7th para)
By Kim Eun-jung

SEOUL, Dec. 3 (Yonhap) -- Seoul Station received a series of bomb threats
Thursday, as citizens and freight owners were becoming increasingly annoyed by
disrupted services caused by a protracted strike of Korea Railroad (KORAIL)
unionists.
KORAIL said its customer center in Seoul received a series of five cellphone text
messages at about 10 a.m. from anonymous senders who threatened to blow up Seoul
Station, located in the center of the capital.
"I can't stand the delayed train schedule. I will blow up Seoul Station at noon
today," one of the messages reads, urging rail workers to end the strike as soon
as possible, according to KORAIL officials and police.
More than 70 police investigators rushed to the railway station to search for
possible explosives, but failed to find anything suspicious, they said.
Police launched an investigation to hunt down the sender of the text messages,
saying a single citizen might have sent them, unable to bear the inconveniences
caused by the extended strike. A 39-year-old man is currently in police custody
in connection with the investigation.
"It is the first time this year that Seoul Station has received a bomb threat. We
don't rule out the possibility of a prank," said a police officer.
About 16,000 unionized workers of KORAIL went on strike Nov. 26 due to a dispute
with management over company-wide restructuring measures centered on wage and
staff cuts. In the late afternoon, their leaders announced that they decided to
"conditionally" end the walkout in return for resuming dialogue with company
management.
The government and KORAIL had deployed replacement workers, including former
train drivers and military personnel, to minimize the impact of the walkout. But
the strike considerably slowed operations of some subway networks and forced
cancellations of about 50 percent of cargo trains in Seoul and the neighboring
vicinity, according to KORAIL.
Earlier in the day, South Korea's big business organizations had released a joint
statement calling for railway workers to end their strike, saying the dispute
could derail the nation's economic recovery.
(END)