Last Saturday At 10 Pm, 1 South Korean Walked Into North Korea Via DMZ, Who Is He?

Photo by Micha Brändli on Unsplash

JAKARTA - A rare incident occurred in the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea. If it's usually North Koreans who try to enter South Korea, this time it's the opposite.

A South Korean has crossed the heavily fortified border. This has been confirmed by the South Korean military on Sunday, January 2, quoted from Channel News Asia.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it carried out a search operation after detecting the person at around 9:20 p.m. on Saturday on the eastern side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas.

"We have confirmed that the person crossed the Military Demarcation Line border at around 10:40 p.m. and defected to the North", the JCS said.

The JCS said it could not confirm whether the person was still alive or not. But they have notified North Korea via a military hotline asking for protection.

The border crossing, which is illegal in South Korea, comes as North Korea has implemented strict anti-coronavirus measures since closing the border in early 2020, although it has yet to confirm any infections.

Public and political furor emerged after North Korean troops shot dead a South Korean fishing official who went missing at sea in September 2020, for which Pyongyang blamed anti-virus rules and apologized.

Two months earlier, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un declared a national emergency and closed a border town after a North Korean defector he said had symptoms of COVID-19 illegally crossed the border into the North from the South.