A North Korean defected to South Korea by crossing the inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea, the Seoul military announced Friday.
The South Korean military intercepted “an individual suspected of being North Korean in the Yellow Sea in mid-September and handed her over to the relevant authorities,” she told AFP, adding that no unusual movements by the North Korean military had been detected at the time of the defection.
According to the South Korean agency Yonhap, the defector fled North Korea aboard a wooden boat. This is the third time since August that a North Korean has managed to cross directly to the South. In August, a defector managed to cross the ultra-fortified and mined land border between the two countries. Another had taken the Han River.
Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953, but almost all do so through China and then a third country like Thailand.
196 passages in 2023
The number of defections fell sharply from 2020, when North Korea hermetically closed its border with China to protect against Covid-19.
In 2023, the year Pyongyang reopened the Chinese border, a total of 196 North Koreans managed to cross into South Korea, compared to just 67 in 2022. According to the South Korean government, more and more members of the class privileged people, diplomats or students abroad, try to flee.
The North Korean army confirmed on Wednesday that it was “permanently” cutting the road and land routes between the two countries, in particular by dismantling the only existing railway line.
In practice, the border between the two Koreas is already completely closed. Since the end of the war in 1953, the railway line has only been in service for a short period of 14 months, in 2007-2008.
