SEOUL: A person who crossed the border into North Korea on New Year’s Day was likely a defector who had slipped through the same heavily fortified frontier in the other direction to settle in South Korea in late 2020, South Korea’s military said Monday.
South Korean surveillance equipment earlier detected an unidentified person entering North Korean territory across the eastern portion of the border on Saturday. The military said its security camera showed the person crawling over a barbed-wire fence established along the southern edge of the border.
On Monday, the Defense Ministry said in a statement it suspects a North Korean defector was the latest border-crosser and that it is trying to confirm related information.
A ministry official said the statement refers to a former North Korean citizen who was captured at the southern part of the border, also on the eastern section, in November 2020. The man identified himself as a former gymnast and told investigators that he had crawled over barbed wire fences to defect before being found by South Korean troops, the official said requesting anonymity citing department rules.
Ministry spokesman Boo Seung-Chan said earlier Monday that North Korea has not responded to a South Korean message sent the previous day to ensure the person’s safety.
In September 2020, North Korea killed a South Korean fisheries official found floating in its waters along a sea boundary. South Korea said that North Korea troops were under orders to shoot anyone illegally crossing the border to protect against the coronavirus pandemic.
The South Korean ministry didn’t provide further details such as why it believes the defector went back to the North.
About 34,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea for economic and political reasons since the late 1990s, and only about 30 of them have returned home in the past 10 years, according to South Korean government records.
Observers say those returnees likely failed to adjust to new highly competitive, capitalistic lives in South Korea, had big debts or were blackmailed by North Korean agents who threatened to do harm to their loved ones if they didn’t return.
Defecting via the border is rare. Unlike its official name, the Demilitarized Zone, the 248-kilometer-long, 4-kilometer-wide border is guarded by land mines, tank traps and combat troops on both sides as well as barbed wire fences. A vast majority of the North Korean defectors in South Korea have come here via China and Southeast Asian countries.
Saturday’s border crossing has raised questions about South Korea’s security posture as the border crosser’s entry into the DMZ was not immediately notice by South Korean troops though their surveillance equipment was later found to have detected the person. The military acknowledged it had sent soldiers but failed to locate the person before he or she crossed the border.
In recent years, the South Korean military faced similar criticism when North Koreans snaked through DMZ areas unnoticed to defect, including one who knocked on the door of a South Korean army barrack.
Seoul: North Korea defector likely made rare border crossing
https://arab.news/w2s8p
Seoul: North Korea defector likely made rare border crossing
- Security camera showed the person crawling over a barbed-wire fence established along the southern edge of the border
Greek coast guard search for 15 after migrant boat found adrift
- The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water
ATHENS: Greek coast guard were on Monday searching for 15 people who fell into the water from a migrant boat that was found drifting off the coast of Crete with 17 bodies on board.
The 17 fatalities, all of them men, were discovered on Saturday on the craft, which was taking on water and partially deflated, some 26 nautical miles (48 kilometers) southwest of the island.
Post-mortem examinations were being carried out to determine how they died but Greek public television channel ERT suggested they may have suffered from hypothermia or dehydration.
A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told AFP that two survivors reported that “15 people fell in the water” after the motor cut out on Thursday, then the vessel drifted for two days.
At the time, Crete and much of the rest of Greece was battered by heavy rain and storms.
The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water.
The vessel had 34 people on board and had left the Libyan port of Tobruk on Wednesday, the Greek port authorities said. Most of those who died came from Sudan and Egypt.
It was initially spotted by a Turkish-flagged cargo ship on Saturday, triggering a search that included ships and aircraft from the Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex.
Migrants have been trying to reach Crete from Libya for the last year, as a way of entering the European Union. But the Mediterranean crossing is perilous.
In Brussels, the EU’s 27 members on Monday backed a significant tightening of immigration policy, including the concept of returning failed asylum-seekers to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The UN refugee agency said more than 16,770 asylum seekers in the EU have arrived on Crete since the start of the year — more than any other island in the Aegean Sea.
Greece’s conservative government has also toughened its migration policy, suspending asylum claims for three months, particularly those coming to Crete from Libya.
