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South Korea said on Thursday that a missing officer on the border between the two countries was brutally killed by North Korea, which incinerated the body.
The disclosure was made by the South Korean Defense Ministry in a statement, in which it is said that explanations were demanded from Pyongyang.
The 47-year-old officer had disappeared Monday while aboard a Ministry of Fisheries boat at the time near Yeonpyeong Island, about ten kilometers from the western maritime border, the tense and disputed Northern Limit Line.
The North Korean troops “found the man in its waters and committed a brutal act by shooting him and burning his body, according to the exhaustive military analysis we made of various intelligence data,” the ministry said in the same note. .
The South Korean vessel was checking for possible unauthorized fishing near the inter-Korean maritime border, where there have already been several naval incidents between the two countries and deadly attacks attributed to North Korea.
However, the disappearance and death of the man should deepen tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang.
Relations between the two Koreas remain tense, especially after the stalemate in nuclear negotiations between North Korea and the United States.
In June, Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its territory in retaliation for South Korea’s civilian pamphlet campaign against North Korea.
At the height of their Cold War rivalry, North Korea often forcibly towed South Korean fishing boats operating near the maritime border, keeping some of the crew on board and returning others.
South Korean defections to North Korea are very rare. But more than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea in the past 20 years for political and economic reasons.
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