[Newsmaker] Woman nabbed for posting flyers containing misinformation on coronavirus vaccines

INCHEON -- A woman has been apprehended for distributing flyers carrying misinformation that coronavirus vaccines will kill people, police said Friday.

The Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency booked the 68-year-old woman after she allegedly posted 33 flyers that carried false information on COVID-19 vaccines on information boards at bus stops and utility poles in the city, about 40 kilometers west of Seoul, on Feb. 8.

The posters contained messages such as "There are chips planted inside the vaccines" and "Vaccines will kill you." 

The suspect was found to have received the flyers from a church in the central city of Daejeon earlier this month.

The Incheon Nonhyun Police Station apprehended the woman on Feb. 15, a day after a civilian report on the flyers came in, and transferred the case to the metropolitan police agency considering the gravity of the case.

Police said the woman claimed during a questioning that she was illiterate so she thought the leaflets were about Christian doctrines.

But the police cast doubt on the credibility of the suspect's statements and have continued to probe the case to figure out if there was a third person behind her act.

"(The police) will try to locate the initial writer of the flyers," officials said. (Yonhap)