A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea throughout the rivals’ closely fortified border on Sunday, South Korea’s navy mentioned.
The navy took custody of the soldier who crossed the central portion of the land border, South Korea‘s Joint Chiefs of Employees mentioned in an announcement. It mentioned the soldier expressed a want to resettle in South Korea.
It was the primary reported defection by a North Korean soldier since a North Korean employees sergeant fled to South Korea by way of the border’s japanese part in August 2024.
Regardless of the 2 border crossings, it is not widespread for North Koreans to defect by way of the land border.
Not like its official identify, the Demilitarized Zone, the 248-kilometer (155-mile) -long, 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide border is guarded by land mines, tank traps, barbed wire fences and fight troops. Satellite tv for pc imagery from final yr exhibits North Korea had began building on what seems to be tranches of wall close to its border with South Korea.
In 2017, when a fleeing North Korean soldier sprinted throughout the border, North Korean troopers fired about 40 rounds earlier than South Korean troopers might drag the wounded soldier to security.
A overwhelming majority of about 34,000 North Koreans who’ve fled to South Korea for the reason that finish of the 1950-53 Korean Battle got here by way of China, which shares an extended, porous border with North Korea.
Relations between the 2 Koreas stay strained, with North Korea repeatedly rejecting outreach by South Korea’s liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who took workplace in June with a vow to revive reconciliation between the rivals.
Earlier this month, North Korean chief Kim Jong Un rolled out his nuclear-armed navy’s strongest weapons at an enormous navy parade attended by overseas leaders.
Joined by high-level Chinese language, Vietnamese and Russian officers at a podium, Kim mentioned in a speech that his navy “ought to proceed to develop into an invincible entity that destroys all threats,” however made no direct point out of the USA or South Korea.
