North Korean guard is shot fleeing South

soldier’s injuries were or why he decided to defect.

South Korean troops found the injured soldier south of the border after hearing gunfire, a Defence Ministry official said.

The defection came at a time of heightened tension over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea has typically accused South Korea of enticing its citizens to defect, something the South denies. About 30,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, but most travel through China.

Panmunjom, once an obscure farming village inside the four kilometre-wide Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas, is where an armistice was signed to pause the Korean War.

Jointly controlled by the US-led UN Command and North Korea, the DMZ is guarded on both sides by hundreds of thousands of troops, razor-wire fences and tank traps.