Seoul, May 19 (DIN NEWS)<\/b>\u00a0A North Korean military officer, accompanied by a civilian, defected to the South across the Yellow Sea today, a South Korean news report said, citing a government source.<\/p>\n
“A small boat was spotted in waters off the north of Baengnyeong Island” near the inter-Korean border, the source told Yonhap news agency, adding that the officer, who holds the rank of major, and a civilian were aboard the vessel.<\/p>\n
“They expressed willingness to defect,” he said.<\/p>\n
A Korea Coast Guard official said relevant authorities were investigating the case, declining to give details.<\/p>\n
The defection was the 14th involving a North Korean soldier since 2000.<\/p>\n
The last defection by a North Korean military officer took place in 2008, YTN TV said.<\/p>\n
It is the first defection by any North Korean since a historic summit between the two Koreas which saw their leaders agree to pursue the denuclearization of the peninsula and a permanent peace.<\/p>\n
In November last year, a North Korean soldier drove to the heavily-guarded border at speed and ran across under a hail of bullets from his own side.<\/p>\n
He was hit multiple times in the dramatic defection at Panmunjom truce village.<\/p>\n
In 2012 a North Korean soldier walked unchecked through rows of electrified fencing and surveillance cameras, prompting Seoul to sack three field commanders for a security lapse.<\/p>\n
In June last year, two of four crew members on a North Korean fishing boat which drifted to the South refused to return home and they were allowed resettle in the South.<\/p>\n
A month later, five North Koreans in another small boat crossed the sea border into South Korean waters and expressed their wish to live in the South.<\/p>\n
More than 30,000 North Korean civilians have fled their homeland but it is very rare for them to cross the closely guarded inter-Korean border, which is fortified with minefields and barbed wire.<\/p>\n
Most flee across the porous frontier with neighbouring China.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seoul, May 19 (DIN NEWS)\u00a0A North Korean military officer, accompanied by a civilian, defected to the South across the Yellow Sea today, a South Korean news report said, citing a government source. “A small boat was spotted in waters off the north of Baengnyeong Island” near the inter-Korean border, the source told Yonhap news agency, adding that the officer, who holds the rank of major, and a civilian were aboard the vessel. “They expressed willingness to defect,” he said. A Korea Coast Guard official said relevant authorities were investigating the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11272,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11270\/revisions\/11272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinnews.in\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}