A North Korean has defected to South Korea by crossing the militarised border within the japanese a part of the Korean peninsula, with Yonhap information company reporting that the defector is a soldier.
Seoul’s army mentioned on Tuesday it had picked up “one suspected North Korean particular person on the japanese entrance and handed them over to the related authorities”. Yonhap information company reported that the particular person was a employees sergeant.
“Related authorities are presently investigating and due to this fact can not verify the detailed means of the defection”, or the person’s precise motivations and targets, the army mentioned.
Defections by North Koreans throughout the border are thought-about dangerous and comparatively uncommon and most escapers make their approach to the South via China or different third nations.
Native media reported that the defector walked alongside the street by the waterfront in japanese Gangwon province, and was sporting their North Korean army uniform once they have been picked up by authorities.
A South Korean defence ministry official mentioned the army took into custody an individual who’s believed to be North Korean on the japanese entrance and authorities have been questioning the motives for the crossing. The official declined to supply additional particulars.
The Joint Chiefs of Employees mentioned that they had not detected any uncommon motion by the North Korean army across the time of the defection.
That is the second defection throughout the border between the Koreas in simply two weeks, after one other North Korean made it throughout the de facto maritime border within the Yellow Sea on 8 August.
The defections come as relations between the 2 Koreas are at one in every of their lowest factors in years, with the North ramping up weapons testing and bombarding the South with trash-carrying balloons.
The variety of profitable defections dropped considerably from 2020 after the North sealed its borders – purportedly with shoot-on-sight orders alongside the land frontier with China – to stop the unfold of Covid-19.
However after border controls eased in 2023, the variety of defectors making it to the South virtually tripled final yr to 196, Seoul mentioned in January, with extra elite diplomats and college students searching for to flee, up from 67 in 2022.
Final week, North Korean tour operations unexpectedly introduced that the nation would reopen to international vacationers this winter.
With Agence France-Presse and Reuters
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