A beach on Jeju Island was temporarily closed Monday as citizens spotted what appeared to be a shark and alerted staff. 

At around 12:30 p.m., something that looked like a shark was seen in waters off the Cloud Bridge east of Hamdeok Beach, and the operators immediately limited public access to the beach. 



Jeju City took a video of the supposed shark off the shore and delivered the footage to Jeju National University’s College of Marine Science to check.

There have been a handful of shark incidents off South Korea’s shores in recent years. Last year, around this time of the year, a dead shark weighing about 300 kilograms was caught in a net off Geoje Island, South Gyeongsang Province, just 300 meters away from land. That shark was about 4 meters long.

According to authorities, a total of six people have been killed locally and one injured in shark attacks since 1959.

By Park Jun-hee (junheeep97@heraldcorp.com)