7 months ago
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A North Korean worker defected to South Korea crossed the heavy fortified border connected Sunday (October 19, 2025), South Korea's subject said.
The subject took custody of the worker who crossed the cardinal information of the onshore border, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said successful a statement. It said the worker expressed a tendency to resettle successful South Korea.
It was the archetypal reported defection by a North Korean worker since a North Korean unit sergeant fled to South Korea via the border's eastbound conception successful August 2024.
Despite the 2 borderline crossings, it isn't communal for North Koreans to defect via the onshore border.
Unlike its authoritative name, the Demilitarised Zone, the 248 km-long, 4 km-wide borderline is guarded by onshore mines, vessel traps, barbed ligament fences, and combat troops.
In 2017, erstwhile a fleeing North Korean worker sprinted crossed the border, North Korean soldiers fired astir 40 rounds before South Korean soldiers could resistance the injured worker to safety.
A immense bulk of astir 34,000 North Koreans who person fled to South Korea since the extremity of the 1950-53 Korean War came via China, which shares a long, porous borderline with North Korea.
Relations betwixt the 2 Koreas stay strained, with North Korea repeatedly rejecting outreach by South Korea’s wide President Lee Jae Myung, who took bureau successful June with a vow to reconstruct reconciliation betwixt the rivals.
