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Rumors about a crisis on the Korean Peninsula have been recently spreading on social media, stoking public insecurity. With multiple government officials stepping forward to deny the rumors and newspapers and broadcasters reporting that they are fake news without any evidence to support them, the rumors seem to be subsiding. But this flare-up has confirmed once again how sensitive the Korean Peninsula is to security issues. And with the US-South Korea joint military exercises continuing until the end of this month, the rumors about a crisis could roar back to life at any time.

The fake news that has exacerbated the sense of a crisis on the Korean Peninsula over the past few days has ranged from the US bombing North Korea to the US and China pushing Kim Jong-un to go into exile. According to one rumor, the US is planning to send stealth fighters to bomb North Korea on Apr. 27. According to another, China is putting pressure on North Korea to induce Kim Jong-un to leave North Korea. What the fake stories about the bombing and exile have in common is that they claim that the US and China reached an agreement about these plans during the recent summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The stories use recent developments to give rumors an air of plausibility.

The South Korean government is taking active steps to deny the rumors of a crisis. “The rumors of a crisis on the Korean Peninsula in April are unfounded,” declared Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Cho June-hyuck during a press briefing on Apr. 11. “We need to be careful not to be misled by exaggerated assessments about the security situation on the Korean Peninsula,” said Defense Ministry Spokesperson Moon Sang-gyun on the same day. “What we were told when we looked into these rumors is that the Trump administration is not planning to bomb North Korea,” said a government source.

Analysts also say the rumors about bombing North Korea are fake news with no supporting evidence. “It would be difficult for the US to bomb North Korea without the consent of South Korea,” said Kim Jong-dae, a lawmaker for the Justice Party and a military affairs analyst. “Even in 1994, the US gave up the idea of bombing North Korea because it would be impossible to evacuate the 70,000 Americans who were in South Korea at the time. Today, that number has increased to over 130,000,” he added.

Even though these rumors are groundless, they have triggered an intense reaction in South Korean society. The rumors of a crisis on the Korean Peninsula have swept social media over the past few days, and they’ve even had an impact on the financial market. Stocks tied to the defense industry soared 2.89% on Apr. 10, when the rumors were at their height, before sinking 1.82% when South Korea’s financial regulators took steps to crack down on unfair trading on Apr. 11.

The rumors about the US bombing North Korea reportedly began to spread when an article titled “US set to attack North Korea on Apr. 27” was posted to a Japanese news website called Japan-biz on Mar. 15. These rumors appear to have picked up steam because of a number of concurrent events: the US-South Korea Foal Eagle military exercises are continuing through the end of the month; there are a series of major political events in North Korea this month, including the birthday of Kim Il-sung on Apr. 15 and the Korean People‘s Army Foundation Day on Apr. 25; no major agreement was reached about the Korean Peninsula during the recent US-China summit; Trump ordered an unexpected missile strike on Syria; and the American aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, which had been heading for Australia, changed course toward the Korean Peninsula.

On top of that, the administration of Donald Trump, who took office at the beginning of this year, has ratcheted up uncertainty in the US’s policy toward North Korea by saying that “all options are on the table,” adding grist to the rumor mill.

While the rumors appear to have died down for now, there is still a real possibility that tensions could increase on the Korean Peninsula. Most significantly, the USS Carl Vinson is reportedly supposed to arrive in waters near the Korean Peninsula around this weekend, which has elicited a fierce backlash from North Korea. “The fact that the US is once again using the USS Carl Vinson nuclear aircraft carrier strike force to poke its nose into the waters around the Korean Peninsula shows that its rash scheme of invading North Korea has reached a serious stage of implementation,” said a spokesperson for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry. Developments on the Korean Peninsula will depend upon the actions of the US, South Korea and North Korea.

At any rate, these events made clear once again how vulnerable South Korean society is to such groundless rumors. Many are blaming the security environment on the Korean Peninsula, where the continuation of high tensions between North and South Korea over the past few years has increased the likelihood of a military clash. There have been rumors about a crisis on the Korean Peninsula several times before, but those rumors have always arisen at a time of high military tensions between the North and South.

“Along with the blockade and sanctions against North Korea, another cause of these rumors about a crisis is the government’s inflexible policy toward the North and its refusal to consider any alternatives. I hope that this incident will teach the next government to think carefully about how to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula and will reflect that in its North Korean policy,” said Kim Dong-yeop, a research professor at the Kyungnam University Institute for Far Eastern Studies.

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer, Han Gwang-deok, finance correspondent, Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]