South Korea announced via loudspeakers that a North Korean soldier who recently defected is expected to recover from gunshot wounds he received during his escape and that he suffered from malnutrition, according to South Korean military officials.
South Korea’s high-decibel loudspeakers on the border with longtime foe North Korea have at times blasted messages intended to inform, agitate, or taunt people on the other side.
The nation’s latest blaring border announcement says that one of communist North Korea’s soldiers defected two weeks ago in a daring afternoon escape at the most sensitive and closely monitored section of the 150-mile border separating the two countries.
The messages proclaim that the soldier — who was shot at least four times as he dashed over a military demarcation line and has been treated at a hospital near Seoul — is expected to recover from his injuries, according to South Korean military officials. The sound clips also say the soldier suffered from life-threatening malnutrition.
Officials said that while treating his gunshot wounds, doctors discovered that the soldier, 24, suffered from tuberculosis, hepatitis B and parasitic worms. After days in intensive care, the soldier — whose family name is Oh — was to be moved to a general recovery room.
Word of Oh’s ill health could be an especially demoralizing message to North Korea’s front-line troops and others within earshot of the speakers. In the recent past, the democratic nation’s speakers have mostly broadcast lighter content, such as South Korean pop music.
“It’s a relatively savvy move by whoever is programming the loudspeaker content, to incorporate that,” said Nat Kretchun, deputy director at the Open Technology Fund, a U. S. government-backed group supporting free expression. “Certainly, that is a message that forward-deployed troops on the [Demilitarized Zone] will know is true and also one that will probably hit home.”
Korea was divided when Japan’s control over the country ceased at the end of World War II in 1945. The messages via speakers began years after the 1953 armistice between the two nations that halted the three-year-long Korean War.
The two countries still share a common alphabet and a largely similar spoken language, though Western-influenced words now permeate the South Korean vocabulary.
