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SEOUL: A North Korean man who crossed the heavily fortified border with South Korea has said he wants to defect to the South, Seoul officials said on Thursday (November 5).
The man was detained in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas on Wednesday, several hours after he was seen crossing barbed wire fences installed along the border, prompting an urgent search operation.
LEE: North Korean man crossed the armed border in possible desertion to the South
Authorities launched an investigation into how the man managed to cross the border, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
“I understand that the person has expressed a willingness to defect,” JCS spokesman Kim Joon-rak said in a briefing, declining to provide further details during the ongoing investigation.
Kim said border controls were being further examined after the man’s search revealed that parts of the fences equipped with electronic monitoring systems had been damaged, possibly by typhoons.
There was no unusual movement by North Korean troops, Kim added.
The defection comes just as Seoul reopens its tours to the southern part of the DMZ, which has seen several gun battles but also served as the location for key inter-Korean events, including some of the more recent summits.
Tours were suspended in October 2019 after a deadly African swine fever outbreak broke out in North Korea, and then due to concerns about this year’s novel coronavirus.
This week’s DMZ crossing is the first since a North Korean soldier defected to the south in 2019.
Another soldier crossed in 2018, and in a more dramatic incident in 2017, North Korean troops shot a soldier as he was driving an army truck through the DMZ.
