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SEOUL, Sept. 25 (AFP): North Korean leader Kim Jong-un apologized on Friday for the killing of a South Korean at sea, calling it “an unexpected and embarrassing event,” the Seoul presidential office said.
The fisheries official was shot dead on Tuesday by North Korean soldiers, and Seoul says his body was set on fire while still in the water, apparently as a precaution against coronavirus infection.
It was the first killing of a southern citizen by North Korean forces in a decade and sparked outrage in the south.
Kim apologized “for disappointing President Moon and the South Koreans” rather than helping them in the face of the “malicious coronavirus,” said Suh Hoon, the South’s national security adviser.
Apologies from the North, much less attributed to Kim personally, are extremely rare, and the message comes with inter-Korean ties frozen amid a showdown in the nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington.
Suh was reading a letter from the department of the ruling Northern party responsible for relations with the South.
In it, Pyongyang acknowledged having fired around 10 shots at the man, who had “illegally entered our waters” and refused to properly identify himself.
Border guards fired him in accordance with current instructions, he said.
His body was no longer visible after the shooting and troops set fire to his flotation device, which was covered in blood, in accordance with national emergency prevention regulations.
Seoul military officials say the man was interrogated while in the water for several hours and expressed a desire to defect, but was killed after an “order from a higher authority.”
The man, who was wearing a life jacket, disappeared from a patrol boat near the western border island of Yeonpyeong on Monday, and North Korean forces located him in its waters more than 24 hours later.
South Korean media reports said that he was in his forties and had two children, but had recently been divorced and was in financial trouble.
Pyongyang closed its borders and declared an emergency to try to protect itself against the virus, which has swept the world since it first emerged in neighboring China. – AFP
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