Thu, Nov 23, 2017 page6

• Video shows defector’s border dash

  BREACH OF CEASEFIRE: The North Korean army had violated the 1953 armistice by firing weapons across the demarcation line and actually crossing it, UN Command said

  • AFP, SEOUL
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  Dramatic footage of a North Korean soldier’s defection released yesterday showed him racing across the border under fire from former comrades and then being hauled to safety by South Korean troops.

  The footage also showed a North Korean guard briefly crossing the border in hot pursuit before retreating — an incident the US-led UN Command described as a serious breach of the 1953 ceasefire that ended Korean War hostilities.

  The defector was shot at least four times in his desperate escape bid at the Panmunjom truce village on Monday last week and has been recovering in a South Korean hospital.

  

  A North Korean soldier is shown defecting into South Korea in these still images taken from a video released by UN Command yesterday. Top, a North Korean soldier drives a military vehicle toward the border, passing checkpoints manned by North Korean guards before appearing to get stuck in a ditch, center, where he gets out and dashes into South Korea as North Korean border guards, not pictured, open fire. The defector lies on the ground before South Korean soldiers, not pictured, drag him to safety.

  Photo: Reuters / UN Command

  It is very rare for the North’s troops to defect at Panmunjom, a major tourist attraction and the only part of the border where forces from the two sides come face-to-face.

  The video released by the UN Command began by showing the defector’s vehicle traveling at speed along an empty road leading to the truce village before stopping near the heavily armed border.

  He then got out of the jeep and ran, pursued by North Korean soldiers with their weapons drawn and firing.

  

  A screengrab from footage released by the UN Command yesterday shows a North Korean soldier running across the military demarcation line while in pursuit of a defector before returning to the north side of the Joint Security Area of the Demilitarized Zone.

  Photo: AFP / UN Command

  The footage then showed the badly injured man being pulled to safety by two South Korean soldiers, who crawled to reach him just south of the dividing line.

  UN Command spokesman Colonel Chad Carroll told journalists that one of the border guards ran across the military demarcation line for a “few seconds before returning back to the north side.”

  An investigation found that the North Korean army violated the 1953 armistice by firing weapons across the demarcation line and by actually crossing it.

  The UN Command has “requested a meeting [with North Korea] to discuss our investigation and measures to prevent future such violations,” Carroll said.

  South Korean and US service members on duty at the border did not return fire, and Carroll commended their restraint in refraining from actions that could have unleashed cross-border hostilities.

  They “demonstrated appropriate self-discipline and sound decisionmaking at a time when the situation on the ground was not nearly as clear as we can see now in the video,” he said.

  The security forces “demonstrated considerable courage that day” and “de-escalated this uncertain and ambiguous situation” at the border, he said.

  The doctor who operated on the defector at a hospital south of Seoul yesterday said he has regained consciousness, but was depressed and would spend several more days in intensive care.

  “As the patient is showing signs of depression due to intense psychological stress following two rounds of major surgeries, he will undergo tests for post-traumatic stress disorder,” Lee Cook-jong told reporters.

  “It’s not like the patient will open his eyes and walk out of the hospital after surgery as you see in movies,” he said.

  However, Lee said he had been able to have extensive conversations with the North Korean man, who had told him he defected to the South of his own free will.

  “The reason that he defected, risking death and facing a barrage of gunshots, was because he had positive hopes about South Korea,” the doctor said.

  In addition to his gunshot injuries, the defector was found to be riddled with intestinal parasites, an apparent result of poor food hygiene in the impoverished North.

  The Yonhap news agency on Tuesday cited a government official as saying that depending on medical advice, an interrogation team is expected to question the defector in four or five days’ time.
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