U.N. says N. Korean troops violated truce while chasing defector

Man recovering in S. Korean hospital after being shot.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — Fully armed North Korean troops violated the truce that halted the 1950-53 Korean War when they fired weapons across the border last week while chasing a fellow communist soldier defecting to South Korea, the United Nations Command said Wednesday.

One of the North Korean chasers briefly crossed the borderline before turning back in a hurry, another violation of the Korean War armistice, the command said.

The U.S.-led United Nations Command, which oversees the armistice, notified the North Korean People’s Army of its findings and demanded a meeting to discuss ways to prevent future violations, the command said in a statement.

The command also released closed-circuit television footage that illustrated the North Korean’s dramatic defection through the Joint Security Area north of Seoul, the South Korean capital, on Nov. 13.

At the signing of the Korean War armistice, a 2.5-milewide Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, was created to keep the warring sides apart, and the heavily guarded Joint Security Area serves as the only point along the DMZ where troops from both sides face off, separated by only a few feet. They could also meet there to discuss enforcing the truce.

According to the footage, the defector sped a drab, olive-colored military jeep along a tree-lined road and into the Joint Security Area after crossing a North Korean landmark known as the 72-Hour Bridge.

When the vehicle did not stop at a North Korean guard post and drove into the North Korean side of the Joint Security Area, communist troops wearing helmets and carrying sidearms and rifles poured out of their buildings. The jeep got stuck near the border line, a white concrete marker barely taller than a brick, which bisects the two sides of the Joint Security Area.

The defector got out and dashed for life across the line, while four North Korean soldiers, one of them lying on the ground, unleashed a hail of bullets to stop him.

In the next segments of the footage, the North Korean defector lay motionless among leaves beside a wall 55 yards south of the border.

Two South Korean army sergeants crawled to him and dragged him to safety, while North Korean soldiers watched them from their guard post.

A U.S. Army medical helicopter evacuated the defector to a South Korean hospital, where he has gone through a series of surgeries to treat at least five gunshot wounds. When doctors opened his abdomen to patch up the damaged digestive tract, they found it riddled with parasitic worms. Analysts considered the discovery evidence of the dire conditions in North Korea, including poor hygiene and nutrition.