YouTube video shows the college student escaping from Israel, as missiles seen flying from a distance
A South Korean college student's video blog about her escape from Israel is garnering nationwide interest here, as it detailed how she barely managed to leave the conflict-ridden country.
The female student in her 20s was first notified of the situation via a siren that blared at 3 a.m. on June 13, prompting an evacuation to a nearby shelter.
"I initially thought the situation would resolve soon, but I heard the sirens again the next day," she said in the video, showing flying missiles that she witnessed from the window of her college dormitory.
She was initially scheduled to leave Tel Aviv on June 16 on a plane headed to Paris, which she booked four months ago, but she found that the flight was cancelled.
With over 100 missile alarms sent by the authorities piling up on her phone, she searched for a ticket on a flight out of Israel, only to find that the price had skyrocketed to at least 2.37 million won ($1,734) from the previous 816,785 won.
With help from the Korean community in Israel and the South Korean embassy there, she received a text message from the embassy about a bus that will be leaving from the Pisgat Ze'ev center and headed to Jordan. From there, she would have to transfer at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Doha, Qatar to get to the Incheon International Airport.
Even as she was packing her suitcase, the siren rang and forced her and her friends to take refuge at a shelter.
In Jordan, another Korean who abruptly left Israel while on a trip there told her that the only other route out of there would have cost $1,500, taking a ferry to Cyprus over 30 hours. He said he was about to buy the ticket when he received the text from the embassy.
The student stayed for a day at a home of a Korean family in Jordan. The rest of the trip went without a hitch and she was welcomed by her father in Incheon, just before 6 p.m. on June 18, concluding her drawn-out exit from Israel that took five days.
Koreans staying or living in Israel have escaped the country in light of the armed conflict that commenced on June 13. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday that 44 Koreans and one Korean-American had just arrived in Egypt from Israel on a bus provided by the government, the latest in the recent exodus from the middle-eastern country.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump announced a complete ceasefire between Israel and Iran has been reached, ending the 12-day conflict that tore across the region.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
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