By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) – A North Korean man who crossed the closely fortified border with South Korea has mentioned he desires to defect to the South, Seoul officers mentioned on Thursday.

The person was taken into custody within the Demilitarised Zone separating the 2 Koreas on Wednesday, a number of hours after he was noticed crossing barbed wire fences put in alongside the border, prompting an pressing search operation.

Authorities have launched an investigation into how the person managed to cross the frontier, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Workers (JCS) mentioned.

“I perceive the individual has expressed his willingness to defect,” JCS spokesman Kim Joon-rak advised a briefing, declining to supply additional element throughout the ongoing investigation.

Kim mentioned border controls had been being additional examined after the seek for the person revealed that some components of the fences geared up with digital monitoring methods had been discovered to have been broken, presumably by typhoons.

There was no uncommon motion from North Korean troops, Kim added.

The defection cames simply as Seoul reopens excursions to the southern a part of the DMZ, which has seen a number of armed clashes but in addition served as a venue for key inter-Korean occasions, together with a number of the most up-to-date summits.

The excursions had been suspended in October 2019 after an outbreak of lethal African swine fever broke out in North Korea, after which as a result of considerations concerning the novel coronavirus this 12 months.

This week’s DMZ crossing is the primary since a North Korean soldier defected to the South in 2019. One other soldier crossed in 2018, and in a extra dramatic 2017 incident, North Korean troops fired at a soldier when he drove a military truck via the DMZ.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Further reporting by Sangmi Cha; Modifying by Jane Wardell)