N Korean troops kill ‘defector’, burn body

North Korean troops shot dead a South Korean fisheries official who went missing this week, before setting him on fire in what was likely an effort to prevent a coronavirus outbreak, South Korea’s military said.

It said evidence suggested the man was attempting to defect to the north when he was reported missing from a fisheries boat on Monday, about 10km south of the Northern Limit Line, a demarcation that acts as the de facto maritime boundary between the two Koreas.

The exact reason the 47-yearold official was shot is not known but North Korean troops appear to have been acting under anti-coronavirus orders, South Korea’s military said. Citing intelligence sources, the military said the unidentified man appeared to have been questioned at sea, north of the line and about 38km from where he went missing, before he was executed on an “order from a superior authority”.

Troops in gas masks then doused the body in oil and set it on fire.

The US military commander in South Korea said this month that North Korean troops had been given “shoot-to-kill orders” to prevent the coronavirus entering the country.

Such strict enforcement of those orders may be an attempt to prevent an outbreak from disrupting a major military parade expected to be held on October 10, when the country commemorates the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.

In July, a man who had defected to South Korea three years ago triggered a coronavirus scare when he crossed back over the heavily monitored border into North Korea, which says it has had no cases of the disease. —