NOT A DRILL

Japan’s Evacuation Warning Over North Korea Missile Wasn’t an Accident, Official Says

The alert told residents to “seek shelter immediately.”

An emergency evacuation warning sent to people in Japan after a North Korean missile launch on Thursday morning was not sent in error, a Japanese government official said, even though the alert was retracted. Residents on the northern island of Hokkaido were told to evacuate and “seek shelter immediately” by the country’s J-Alert warning system over fears that a missile was about to hit, though the alert was later dropped and initially blamed on a malfunction. “We did not correct the information issued by the J-Alert” system, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno explained at a news conference. He said instead that the missile vanished from Japanese radar immediately after it was detected, and that further analysis showed it would not hit Japanese soil. “The J-Alert warning was issued to inform citizens of the danger of a falling missile to prioritize citizen' safety,” Matsuno added.