Key Points
- On Tuesday, the Israeli embassy in Seoul posted a video depicting South Koreans being attacked by assailants.
- The video referenced the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel and urged viewers to "imagine" this happening to them.
- The video has now been removed after being labelled "inappropriate" by Seoul's foreign ministry.
An "inappropriate" video depicting Koreans being attacked by masked assailants has been taken down.
The video was uploaded by the Israeli embassy and referenced Hamas' attack on the country on 7 October.
Seoul's foreign ministry said, in a statement sent to AFP, that the video was deemed "inappropriate" and that it had asked the Israeli embassy to take it down.
The video, which is no longer available on the embassy's social media, depicted a distressing scenario in which a South Korean woman in the capital is abducted by an armed assailant on Christmas Day, and forcibly separated from her young daughter, a clip published by South Korean broadcaster YTN showed.
The Israeli embassy wrote, alongside the now-removed video posted on its Facebook account on Tuesday: "On October 7th, Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists. 1,200 men, women and children were killed, and over 240 people were taken hostage in Gaza."
"Imagine if it happened to you. What would you do?" it added.
YTN reported that Israel's ambassador in Seoul, Akiva Tor, said in a social media post that has since been deleted: "We have reconstructed the horrifying terrorist incident that took place on 7 October to help South Koreans in East Asia, far away from Israel, understand the current war situation."
Israel has repeatedly vowed to keep up its campaign to destroy Palestinian militant group Hamas in retaliation for its 7 October attack, which left over 1,200 people dead according to the Israeli government.
The militants also took around 240 hostages.
Israel's bombardment and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip have killed at least 21,110 people, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.
"The killing and kidnapping of Israeli civilians by Hamas cannot be justified, but the Israeli Embassy's production and distribution of a video drawing parallels to the security situation in another country was deemed inappropriate," South Korea's foreign ministry said in the statement.
"We have conveyed our position to the Israeli Embassy in South Korea, and the Israeli side has taken measures to delete the video in question."
Hamas is a Palestinian political and military group, which has governed the Gaza Strip since the most recent elections in 2006.
Hamas' stated aim is to establish a Palestinian state and stop the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, illegal under international law.
