The unarmed man was discovered within the central-west border part earlier than being led to security by South Korean troops.
A North Korean man has crossed the closely fortified land border with South Korea and is now being held in custody, the South Korean army has confirmed.
The unarmed particular person was positioned on Thursday within the central-west part of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), earlier than being guided by South Korean troops to security, in line with South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Workers.
Seoul’s military carried out “a typical guiding operation to safe custody”, a course of that concerned a substantial variety of troopers, it stated.
After the North Korean was detected early on Thursday morning, the duty of bringing him to security took about 20 hours to finish, the Joint Chiefs of Workers added.
He was primarily nonetheless throughout the day, with South Korean troopers approaching him at evening, it famous.
Seoul has not commented on whether or not it considered the border crossing as a defection try.
There have been no quick indicators of surprising army exercise in North Korea, the South Korean military stated.
Crossing between the 2 Koreas is comparatively uncommon and very dangerous, because the border space is strewn with mines.
It’s extra frequent for defectors to first journey throughout North Korea’s border with China, earlier than heading on to South Korea.
Final August, a North Korean soldier reportedly defected to the South and was taken into custody within the northeastern county of Goseong.
After which in April, South Korean troops fired warning photographs after roughly 10 North Korean troopers briefly crossed the army demarcation line. Pyongyang’s officers returned to their very own territory with out returning fireplace, Seoul stated.
The crossing on Thursday comes a month after the liberal politician Lee Jae-myung was elected as the brand new South Korean president, following months of political chaos, which started with the conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol’s short-lived try and impose martial law in December.
Lee has taken a distinct stance from his predecessor on North Korean chief Kim Jong Un, promising to “open a communication channel with North Korea and set up peace on the Korean Peninsula via talks and cooperation”.
“Politics and diplomacy have to be dealt with with out emotion and approached with cause and logic,” he stated on Thursday. “Fully chopping off dialogue is known as a silly factor to do.”
As a part of his try and rebuild belief along with his neighbour, Lee has banned loudspeaker broadcasts on the border and tried to cease activists flying balloons with propaganda into North Korea.
Nonetheless, it stays to be seen whether or not Kim will cooperate.
In response to Yoon’s resolution to strengthen army alliances with Washington, DC, and Tokyo, Kim referred to as South Korea his nation’s “principal enemy” final January.
Diplomatic efforts have stalled on the Korean Peninsula because the collapse of denuclearisation talks between Washington and Pyongyang in 2019 throughout the first US President Donald Trump administration, after a sequence of Trump-Kim summits, globally watched spectacles that bore little concrete progress.