(Bloomberg) — An unidentified person from South Korea crossed the fortified border into the North Saturday — just 17 months after North Korea killed a South Korean citizen who strayed into its territory.
“An unidentified person was captured in a thermal imaging device in the DMZ on the eastern front,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Sunday. The South’s military sent troops but failed to locate the person, it added.
The military later discovered the person crossed the South’s general outpost fence at around 6:40 pm, when it replayed its surveillance camera footage. The JCS said it only first recognized the transgression via its thermal device in the demilitarized zone at around 9:20 pm., before the person entered the North’s territory at around 10:40 pm. It did not elaborate.
Seoul sent a message to Pyongyang on Sunday to try to ensure the person’s safety, according to local media including Yonhap. North Korea is yet to respond, South Korea’s defense ministry spokesman Boo Seung-chan said in a regular briefing Monday.
South Korea is working with relevant authorities to identify the person, JCS spokesman Kim Jun-rak said at the briefing, adding that North Korean military showed no unusual activities so far. The ministry has deployed 17 staff to investigate the matter, he added.
In September 2020, a 47-year-old South Korean government employee who went missing near a heavily patrolled nautical border was fatally shot by North Korean military personnel before they burned the body amid coronavirus fears.
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un said that imposing strict virus restrictions still is one of the country’s top priorities at a Workers’ Party meeting in Pyongyang, according to the North’s official Korea Central News Agency Saturday.
In July 2020, a 24-year-old defector crossed the border into the North by passing through a barbed wire-blocked ditch and entering a Han River estuary to the sea in the west, then swimming back to North Korea.
The killing of another South Korean citizen could mar President Moon Jae-in’s latest bid for the official end of the Korean war with North Korea. Although an armistice between the U.S.-led UN Command and China and North Korea ended open fighting, the agreement was never signed by South Korea and never replaced with a peace treaty.
Kim Jong Un has repeatedly rejected Moon’s overtures for talks. In June 2020, North Korea blew up the $15 million liaison office the South Korea side had built to serve as a de facto embassy for the countries.
(Updates South Korea defense ministry briefing)
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