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SEOUL: North Korea expressed regret on Friday (September 25) over the death of a missing South Korean and said he shot him as part of measures to combat COVID-19, 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 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.
The 47-year-old South Korean fisheries official had disappeared from a patrol boat and ended up in Pyongyang waters, the Seoul Defense Ministry said on Thursday, adding that the man was aboard a boat near the island. Yeonpyeong western border.
READ: South Korean police arrest a deserter attempting to cross back to North Korea
After analyzing the intelligence, the South Korean military “confirmed that North Korea shot a South Korean national found in the North Seas and that his body was cremated,” it said.
Soldiers fired more than 10 shots at the man 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.
It was not immediately clear how the man got into the water. Previous reports said that his shoes were found on the patrol boat, leading to speculation that he may have been trying to defect.
The message came as Moon faced intense political fallout from the incident, which coincided with a renewed push for politics to involve Pyongyang..
The commander of the United States Forces in Korea, Robert Abrams, said earlier this month that North Korean authorities issued shoot-to-kill orders to prevent the coronavirus from entering the country from China, creating a “buffer zone” in the border with special forces soldiers ready to kill.
Pyongyang closed its border with China in January to try to prevent contamination. In July, state media said the country had raised the state of emergency to the highest level.
