North Korean soldier flees over border

A North Korean soldier escaped across the border with South Korea in a rare defection over the minestrewn demilitarised zone dividing the countries.

The South Korean defence ministry said it had detained a Korean People’s Army soldier after he was detected by thermal imaging equipment late on Wednesday night.

The man, whose identity and motives remain unknown, crossed the so-called military demarcation line close to the Imjin River in the west of the peninsula. He was taken into military custody for questioning.

The South Korean army said that such a crossing was rare, noting that there was ‘‘no particular military movement seen across the border’’.

Separately, the South Korean government announced that a missing North Korean diplomat had left Italy and was under protection in a third country. Jo Song-gil abandoned his job as acting ambassador to Rome in November, vanishing with his wife in what turns out to have been a defection.

More than 30,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the Korean War of 1950 to 1953, but most cross the border between North Korea and China and travel on to the South. In 2017 Oh Chong-song, a soldier aged 24, narrowly escaped after being shot five times by his comrades as he made a desperate sprint into South Korea at Panmunjom, the only part of the 250km border free of fences and mines.

A weapons test by North Korea this week was played down by the United States, despite Kim Jong Un warning that his enemies were now ‘‘a fat target’’.

John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, said that the test would not upset efforts to restart diplomatic negotiations with the North but raised doubt about the efforts on which the president had personally staked so much.