A North Korean soldier was shot at and injured by his own side on Monday while defecting to South Korea at the border truce village of Panmunjom, the South’s military said.
The soldier, thought to be low ranking, was shot in the shoulder and elbow and was picked up bleeding on the South side of a portion of the border known as the Joint Security Area (JSA).
It is rare for the North’s troops to defect at the truce village, a major tourist attraction bisected by the borderline and the only part of the frontier where forces from the two sides come face-to-face.
“Our military has taken in a North Korean soldier after he crossed from a North Korea post towards our Freedom House,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement, referring to a building on the South side of the village.
A JCS official quoted by Yonhap news agency said the South’s soldiers heard a gunshot and then retrieved the unarmed soldier in the mid-afternoon. He was evacuated to a private hospital by a UN helicopter, the official added, saying the solider had regained consciousness but declining to comment on whether his injuries were life-threatening.
No personal details have been released but the soldier’s uniform suggested he was low-ranking, Yonhap said. Also on Monday, South Korean police arrested an American for entering a restricted zone — in a separate border area — with the apparent intention of crossing to the North, Yonhap reported.
