North Korean man crosses heavily fortified DMZ border to South Korea

The unarmed antheral was recovered successful the central-west borderline conception earlier being led to information by South Korean troops.

A North Korean antheral has crossed the heavy fortified onshore borderline with South Korea and is present being held successful custody, the South Korean subject has confirmed.

The unarmed idiosyncratic was located connected Thursday successful the central-west conception of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), earlier being guided by South Korean troops to safety, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Seoul’s service carried retired “a modular guiding cognition to unafraid custody”, a process that progressive a sizeable fig of soldiers, it said.

After the North Korean was detected aboriginal connected Thursday morning, the task of bringing him to information took astir 20 hours to complete, the Joint Chiefs of Staff added.

He was chiefly inactive during the day, with South Korean soldiers approaching him astatine night, it noted.

Seoul has not commented connected whether it viewed the borderline crossing arsenic a defection attempt.

There were nary contiguous signs of antithetic subject enactment successful North Korea, the South Korean service said.

Crossing betwixt the 2 Koreas is comparatively uncommon and highly risky, arsenic the borderline country is strewn with mines.

It is much communal for defectors to archetypal question crossed North Korea’s borderline with China, earlier heading connected to South Korea.

Last August, a North Korean worker reportedly defected to the South and was taken into custody successful the northeastern region of Goseong.

And past successful April, South Korean troops fired informing shots aft astir 10 North Korean soldiers concisely crossed the subject demarcation line. Pyongyang’s officers returned to their ain territory without returning fire, Seoul said.

The crossing connected Thursday comes a period aft the wide person Lee Jae-myung was elected arsenic the caller South Korean president, pursuing months of governmental chaos, which began with the blimpish President Yoon Suk-yeol’s short-lived effort to impose martial law successful December.

Lee has taken a antithetic stance from his predecessor connected North Korean person Kim Jong Un, promising to “open a connection transmission with North Korea and found bid connected the Korean Peninsula done talks and cooperation”.

“Politics and diplomacy indispensable beryllium handled without emotion and approached with crushed and logic,” helium said connected Thursday. “Completely cutting disconnected dialog is truly a foolish happening to do.”

As portion of his effort to rebuild spot with his neighbour, Lee has banned loudspeaker broadcasts astatine the borderline and attempted to halt activists flying balloons with propaganda into North Korea.

However, it remains to beryllium seen whether Kim volition cooperate.

In effect to Yoon’s determination to fortify subject alliances with Washington, DC, and Tokyo, Kim called South Korea his country’s “principal enemy” past January.

Diplomatic efforts person stalled connected the Korean Peninsula since the illness of denuclearisation talks betwixt Washington and Pyongyang successful 2019 during the archetypal US President Donald Trump administration, aft a bid of Trump-Kim summits, globally watched spectacles that bore small factual progress.

Source:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies