South Korea's government issued a warning on 15 July to the country's merchant ships operating near the Panama canal, after it received information from a shipping company that an al-Qaida-linked group had threatened terrorist attacks on South Korean vessels operating in the area. The warning came a week after the Panama Canal Authority said it was going to increase security checks to protect the canal, which handles 14,000 ships per year, the majority from the US, Japan, and China.

An official from the South's Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries was quoted by the Yonhap news agency as saying: 'After receiving a request from a shipping company to confirm the intelligence, we tried to verify it through the [South Korean] consulate in Sao Paulo and the embassy in Panama, but we have not been able to [find] any concrete information. We are still asking those vessels that pass through the area to be on high alert just in case."

The warning is the second in the last month about possible terrorist attacks on South Korean ships. On 10 July the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry issued a warning about potential terrorist attacks on vessels delivering goods to US forces in Iraq, following a threat by an Islamic militant group posted to the website albasrah.net. The group named one South Korean and eight international shipping firms as targets for attacks.