South Korean crosses armed border in rare flight to North Korea

A South Korean citizen crossed the heavily fortified border in a rare desertion to North Korea, the South Korean Army reported on Sunday (2).

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it carried out a search operation after detecting the person around 9:20 pm (local time) on Saturday on the east side of the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas.

“We confirmed that the person crossed the military demarcation line around 10:40 pm and defected to the North,” JCS said.

JCS said it could not confirm the person was alive, but sent a notice to North Korea over a military telephone line, asking for protection.

Border crossings, illegal in South Korea, have taken place as North Korea has implemented stringent measures against the coronavirus since its border closures in early 2020, yet it has not confirmed any infections.

There was a public and political outcry after North Korean soldiers shot down a South Korean fisheries officer who disappeared at sea in September 2020, an incident that Pyongyang blamed on strict anti-coronavirus measures and apologized.

Two months earlier, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared a national emergency and cordoned off a border town after a North Korean defector, who said he was suffering from Covid-19 symptoms, crossed the border illegally from the south into the north.

The lengthy lockdowns and restrictions on movement between provinces imposed by North Korea have also reduced the number of defections from North to South to an all-time low.

Relations between the two countries soured after negotiations between North Korea and the United States for denuclearization stalled after a summit that failed in 2019.

South Korea and US-led UN forces are still technically at war with North Korea, given that the Korean War (1950-1953) ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.