South Korea: North Korea Wounds Soldier as He Defects

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA– North Korean soldiers contended and injured a fellow soldier who was crossing a collectively controlled area at the heavily guarded border to defect to South Korea on Monday, the South’s military said.North Korean soldiers have actually occasionally defected to South Korea throughout the border. It’s rare for a North Korean soldier to defect by means of the Joint Security Area, where border guards of the rival Koreas stand dealing with each other simply meters (feet )away, and be shot by fellow North Korean soldiers. The soldier bolted from a guard post at the northern side of Panmunjom town in the Joint Security Location to the southern side of the town, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff stated in a statement. He was shot in the shoulder and elbow and was taken to a South Korean health center, the South’s Defense Ministry stated. It wasn’t immediately understood how severe the soldier’s injuries were or why he chose to defect.South Korean troops found the injured soldier south of the border after hearing sounds of shooting, a South Korean Defense Ministry official stated, asking for privacy, pointing out department guidelines. South Korean troops didn’t fire at the North, he said.The defection came at a time of increased stress over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and could

escalate bitterness in between the competing countries. North Korea has typically implicated South Korea of luring its residents to flaw, something the South denies. About 30,000 North Koreans have actually defected to South Korea considering that completion of the 1950-53 Korean War, however a lot of travel through China.Panmunjom, once

an obscure farming village inside the 4-kilometer-wide( 2.5-mile-wide)Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas, is where an armistice was signed to stop briefly the Korean War. Collectively managed by the American-led U.N. Command and North Korea, the DMZ is safeguarded on both sides by numerous countless combat-ready troops, razor-wire fences and tank traps. More than a million mines are thought to be buried inside the zone.