PANMUNJOM (South Korea) • North Korea violated an armistice agreement with South Korea earlier this month, when its soldiers shot and wounded a North Korean soldier as he defected across the border, and it must not do so again, South Korea’s defence minister said yesterday..
PANMUNJOM (South Korea) • North Korea violated an armistice agreement with South Korea earlier this month, when its soldiers shot and wounded a North Korean soldier as he defected across the border, and it must not do so again, South Korea’s defence minister said yesterday.
The defector, who is identified only by his surname Oh, was critically wounded but has been recovering in a hospital in South Korea.
The incident comes at a time of heightened tension between North Korea and the international community over its nuclear weapons programme, but the North has not publicly responded to the defection at the sensitive border.
South Korean Minister of Defence Song Young Moo issued his warning to the North while on a visit to the border. He also commended the South Korean soldiers at a Joint Security Area (JSA), in the so-called Truce Village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone, for rescuing the defector.
A North Korean border guard briefly crossed the border in the chase for the defector on Nov 13, a video released by the United Nations Command in Seoul showed, a violation of the ceasefire accord between North and South at the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War.
