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SEOUL: North Korea expressed regret on Friday over the death of a missing South Korean and said it shot him as part of measures to combat the coronavirus, the South’s national security adviser said.
North Korea’s United Front Department, in charge of cross-border ties, sent a letter to South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s office a day after Seoul officials said North Korean soldiers killed a South Korean before spraying. your body in oil and set it on fire. .
The message came as Moon faced intense political fallout from the incident, which coincided with a renewed push for politics to involve Pyongyang.
The letter quoted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as saying he “regretted” that the incident disappointed the South Korean public and should not have happened, Moon’s security adviser Suh Hoon said.
Soldiers fired more than 10 shots at the man, a South Korean fisheries official who disappeared this week, after he did not reveal his identity and tried to flee, Suh said, citing the letter.
But the letter said they had burned a flotation device that he was using, according to his antivirus manuals, and not his body.
“Troops were unable to locate the unidentified intruder during a search after firing and burning the device under the national emergency disease prevention measures,” Suh said at a briefing, referring to the letter.
