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Heartless prank

April 17, 2014

The Korean police department’s Cyber Terror Response Center said Thursday that these images floating around the Internet have been determined to be fake. (Yonhap)

Police say mobile messages sent to families
purportedly by missing students trapped in
the sunken wreckage of the Sewol are fake

“I’m in the second year in classroom nine and I’m alive,” a photo of a cellphone message being spread around social networking sites reads. “I’m inside the cafeteria. Lots of kids are still alive. Please save us. I don’t have much battery left, but we’re in the cafeteria and there’s not much water. … I’m with 14 other people.”

Messages like these have been shared on Facebook and Twitter since Wednesday.

Many thought they were cries for help from the hundreds of high school students trapped inside the sunken ferry boat.

The Korean police department’s Cyber Terror Response Center said Thursday that these images floating around the Internet have been determined to be fake.

The center said it came to the conclusion after checking the activities — texts, calls, Kakaotalk messages — of the cellphone numbers of the missing passengers from the time of the sinking to 10 a.m. Thursday.

The center said it analyzed more than 300 cellphones, as some passengers had multiple phones.

The police became involved after seeing photos of text, Facebook and Kakaotalk messages from ferry passengers being shared on Twitter and Facebook.

According to the police, messages sent via Kakaotalk are sent instantly to its servers. They have also contacted Facebook for cooperation regarding messages posted onto Facebook.

The center has sent reports to local stations, including the Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency, to find those who created 10 such false reports.

Police say they plan to charge them with disruption of duty or libel.

“We confirmed even before analyzing cellphone activities that many of the messages on social networking sites came from fabricated individuals,” a police spokesman said. “We will severely punish those who spread false messages and who gave both pain to families of the missing and confusion to those in the rescue effort.”