SEOUL, South Korea — A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea throughout the rivals’ closely fortified border on Sunday, South Korea’s army stated.
The army took the custody of the soldier who crossed the central portion of the land border, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Employees stated in an announcement. It stated the soldier expressed a need to resettle in South Korea.
It was the primary reported defection by a North Korean soldier since a North Korean workers sergeant fled to South Korea through the border’s jap part in August 2024.
Regardless of the 2 border crossings, it isn’t frequent for North Koreans to defect through the land border.
Not like its official title, 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. In 2017, when a fleeing North Korean soldier sprinted throughout the border, North Korean troopers fired about 40 rounds, earlier than South Korean troopers may 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 Warfare got here through 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.
