Photo : YONHAP News
A North Korean man crossed the de facto Western maritime border into South Korea aboard a wooden boat last month, but the news was not disclosed at the time.
According to the South Korean military on Friday, the man crossed the Northern Limit Line near South Korea’s Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea in the early hours of September 17 in a small wooden boat.
The South Korean military was reportedly monitoring the situation before the boat crossed the line and guided the man through the defection process.
It was the third defection by a North Korean in two months.
In August, a North Korean citizen defected to South Korea after crossing the neutral zone of the Han River estuary and a North Korean soldier crossed the Military Demarcation Line within the heavily fortified inter-Korean border.
North Korean defections appear to be continuing despite the North’s measures to strengthen its security in front-line border areas and to cut off road and railway links to South Korea.