A North Korean citizen has defected to South Korea by crossing the maritime border in fact in the Yellow Sea, South Korean news agency Yonhap said Thursday (8/8).
Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the peninsula was divided by war in the 1950s.
The latest defections come as relations between the two Koreas are at their lowest point in years, with North Korea stepping up weapons tests and bombarding the South with garbage-laden balloons.
“1 North Korean defected across maritime border in Yellow Sea: military,” Yonhap wrote in its one-line report.
Other local South Korean media reported Thursday that two North Koreans attempted to defect to the South via Gyodong Island on the border, which is less than five kilometers from North Korea.
The South Korean military only managed to secure one of them, the report said.
Most defectors travel overland to neighboring China first, then enter a third country such as Thailand before finally making it to South Korea.
The number of successful escapes has dropped sharply since 2020 after North Korea closed its borders – believed to have included a shoot-on-sight order along its land border with China – to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
But the number of defectors who managed to reach South Korea nearly tripled last year to 196, up from 67 in 2022, Seoul said in January, with more elite diplomats and students trying to escape.
'Not happy with North Korean system'
The North Koreans crossed “a neutral zone at the mouth of the Han River west of the inter-Korean land border” and then arrived on South Korea’s Gyodong Island, Yonhap reported Thursday, citing unnamed military sources.
South Korean Defense Minister Shin Wok-sik told a parliamentary committee that an investigation “is being carried out by relevant authorities,” Yonhap reported.
The incident is the first time in 15 months that a North Korean has defected to South Korea via the Yellow Sea.
In May 2023, a family of nine escaped from North Korea on a wooden boat.
Experts say defectors are likely affected by difficult living conditions, including food shortages and inadequate responses to natural disasters, while living in isolated North Korea.
“North Korea has suffered severe flood damage recently and this has caused a lot of damage in various areas as well, including in some parts of the city,” Cheong Seong-chang, director of Korean peninsula strategy at the Sejong Institute, told AFP.
“It is possible that people who are unhappy with the system in North Korea are using this internal instability and chaos to defect.”
Heavy rains pounded the country's northern regions in late July, with South Korean media reporting a possible death toll of up to 1,500.
Pyongyang considers defection a serious crime and allegedly imposes very harsh punishments on perpetrators, their families and even people closely associated with the defection.
South Korea has responded to increased North Korean weapons tests and sending of garbage balloons this year by resuming propaganda broadcasts across the border, suspending a military deal to ease tensions and restarting live-fire drills near the border. (uh/ab)
