Kim Yu-jin, a 31-year-old service worker, was spending Wednesday afternoon at a cafe in central Seoul when the air raid sirens went off for South Korea’s first nationwide civil defense drill in six years.

But when Kim went to seek shelter against the hypothetical North Korean air raid in accordance with government recommendations, she observed that she was the only one at the cafe to do so.

Then when she arrived at an insurance company building — a location identified on a government map as a shelter open to the public — a security guard at the entrance refused to