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The South Korean official disappeared on Monday and Seoul said he had been shot and his body burned.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has apologized for the fatal shooting of a South Korean fisheries official by the army earlier this week, the Yonhap news agency reported on Friday, citing the presidential office.
In a formal letter to Seoul, North Korea conveyed Kim’s message that it was “very sorry” for “disappointing” South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Moon faces intense political pressure over the incident, which coincided with a renewed push for politics to involve Pyongyang.
The official disappeared from a fishing patrol boat on Monday when it was about 10 kilometers (six miles) south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a disputed line of military control that acts as the de facto maritime boundary between the two Koreas. .
South Korea said on Thursday that the man had been shot and killed by North Korean troops and his body burned.
The North Korean coastline from a vantage point on South Korean-controlled Yeonpyeong Island near the disputed waters of the Yellow Sea at sunrise. North Korea apologized after its forces shot dead a southern fisheries official who disappeared from a patrol boat on Monday and ended up in its waters. [File: Ed Jones /AFP]
North Korea said it had carried out its own investigation into the incident and found that soldiers near its western sea border had fired at least 10 shots at South Korea, Yonhap said.
The man was meddling in the waters of the North and the army acted in accordance with regulations, the letter adds, saying it was not the official’s body that had been burned, but the flotation device he had been using.
“The troops were unable to locate the unidentified intruder during a search after shooting, and burned the device under the national emergency disease prevention measures,” Suh Hoon, Moon’s security adviser, said in a briefing, referring to the North letter.
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