NKorean soldier defects to South

A North Korean soldier escaped to the South on Thursday across the heavily guarded Demilitarized Zone that divides on both sides of the tense border in the second defection in successive months.

The “low-ranking” soldier was spotted by South Korean soldiers using surveillance equipment as he crossed the land border near Yeoncheon in thick fog and made his way to a guard post, a spokesman for Seoul’s defense ministry said.

There were no shots at the time, he said, but about 80 minutes later South Korean troops fired around 20 rounds from a K- 3 machine gun to warn off Northern guards who approached the border apparently looking for their comrade.

Two bursts of gunfire were later heard in the North, the spokesman said, but there were no indications of any bullets crossing the border.

The incident came a month after a rare and dramatic defection by a Northern soldier under a hail of bullets from his own side at Panmunjom, the truce village where opposing forces confront each other across a concrete dividing line.

On that occasion the defector drove to the heavily guarded border at speed and ran across the border as North Korean troops four times.

Footage showed the badly injured man being pulled to safety by two South Korean soldiers who crawled to reach him just south of the demarcation line.

in hospital in the South.

Yeoncheon, where Thursday’s defection happened, is in the Midwestern part of the DMZ, in Gyeonggi province.