Seoul General Staff, ‘led and taken into custody by the military’
A North Korean soldier managed to defect, fleeing to South Korea after successfully crossing the military demarcation line (MDL) between the two Koreas, which is heavily fortified, mined and guarded, and was taken into custody by the Seoul military. “Our military has obtained custody of a North Korean soldier who crossed the military demarcation line on the Central Front on Sunday,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement released by Yonhap news agency.
“The army identified the individual near the MDL, tracked and monitored him and guided him, and then took him into custody,” he added. Yonhap previously reported that the North Korean soldier defected to the South after crossing the land border.
The military demarcation line runs through the center of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the border area separating the two Koreas, which is one of the most heavily mined places in the world. Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the peninsula was divided by war in the 1950s, most first heading overland to neighboring China, then entering a third country such as Thailand before finally reaching the South. Defections across the land border, however, are rare. But recently, a civilian managed to cross the border, aided by Seoul’s army in an operation that lasted 20 hours. Last year in August a soldier from the Pyongyang army succeeded.
