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DRAMATIC FOOTAGE OF a North Korean soldier’s defection has been released showing him racing across the border under fire from former comrades, and then being hauled to safety by South Korean troops.
The footage also showed a North Korean guard briefly crossing the border in hot pursuit before retreating - an incident the US-led United Nations Command (UNC) described as a serious breach of the 1953 ceasefire that ended Korean War hostilities.
The defector was shot at least four times in his desperate escape bid at the Panmunjom truce village on 13 November and has been recovering in a South Korean hospital.
It is very rare for the North’s troops to defect at Panmunjom, a major tourist attraction and the only part of the border where forces from the two sides come face-to-face.
The video released by the UNC began by showing the defector’s vehicle travelling at speed along an empty road leading to the truce village before stopping near the heavily armed border.
He then got out of the jeep and ran, pursued by North Korean soldiers with their weapons drawn and firing.
The footage then showed the badly injured man being pulled to safety by two South Korean soldiers who crawled to reach him just south of the dividing line.
UN Command spokesman Colonel Chad Carroll told reporters that one of the border guards ran across the military demarcation line for a “few seconds before returning back to the north side.”
An investigation found that the North Korean army violated the 1953 armistice both by firing weapons across the demarcation line and by actually crossing it.
The UNC has “requested a meeting [with North Korea] to discuss our investigation and measures to prevent future such violations”, Carroll said.
‘Considerable courage’
South Korean and US service members on duty at the border did not return fire, and Carroll commended their restraint in refraining from actions that could have unleashed cross-border hostilities.
They “demonstrated appropriate self-discipline and sound decision-making at a time when the situation on the ground was not nearly as clear as we can see now in the video”, he said.
The security forces “demonstrated considerable courage that day” and “deescalated this uncertain and ambiguous situation” at the border”, he said.
Tensions between the US and North Korea are running high after a series of missile and nuclear tests aimed at deploying an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to US cities.
The United States yesterday unveiled new sanctions targeting North Korean shipping and Chinese traders doing business with Pyongyang, again raising the pressure on the pariah state to abandon its nuclear program.
President Donald Trump said this week that the sanctions were the first in a series of moves over the next two weeks that will reinforce his “maximum pressure campaign” against Kim Jong-Un’s regime.
Defector conscious
The doctor who operated on the defector at a hospital south of Seoul said he has regained consciousness but was depressed and would spend several more days in intensive care.
“As the patient is showing signs of depression due to intense psychological stress following two rounds of major surgeries, he will undergo tests for post-traumatic stress disorder,” Lee Cook-Jong told reporters.
It’s not like the patient will open his eyes and walk out of the hospital after surgery as you see in movies.
However, Lee said he had been able to have an extensive conversation with the North Korean man who had told him he defected to the South of his own free will.
“The reason that he defected, risking death and facing a barrage of gunshots, was because he had positive hopes about South Korea,” he said.
In addition to his gunshot injuries, the defector was found to be riddled with intestinal parasites, an apparent result of poor food hygiene in the impoverished North.
The Yonhap news agency cited a government official as saying that depending on medical advice, an interrogation team is expected to question the defector in four or five days’ time.
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His family are going to feel the consequences
@Shane Murphy: Unfortunately, this is true.
@Arthur Pewty: American gun attack “images are too distressing to show”, north Korea man shot four times … Here you go. I forgot he wasn’t a real person!
A communist defector wanting a life in the free world, I swear this came up I a history test somewhere. But wait according to liberalism, this is uthopia. Im confused !
@Jonathan Byrne: You’re confused because a) you don’t know what communism is (North Korea is not communist) and b) you don’t know what liberalism is (no liberal holds North Korea up as any form of utopia). Then again, if you don’t know how to spell “utopia” (a word which any autocorrect software would have corrected for you), then it means you obviously don’t read much. In that case, I’m not surprised you’re confused.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: if you message In a dialogue that is rethorical, and point out grammar mistakes, and also speak for everyone that is resprestive of your view on a social media forum. Then you must be too the Messiah of intellect, thank you for be your insight.
@Jonathan Byrne: I have read your comment five times now and I still have no idea what you’re trying to say.
@Jonathan Byrne: And, by the way, I didn’t correct your grammar. I only wrote a short comment and you couldn’t even understand that. Again, explain how you can understand political terms if you don’t know the difference between spelling and grammar.
@Jonathan Byrne: your comment wasn’t rhetorical. it was complete nonsense from a person who hasn’t a clue about what they are talking about.
I was expecting more drama, as per headline’s description.
@Martin Flood:
Sorry if it wasn’t entertaining enough for you.
@Avina Laaf: Oh that’s alright Avina. Hopefully you’ll put a bit more effort into your next production.
for what is supposed to be a poverty stricken backward country….the roads look fine ! although I’m sure some cyclist will come on criticizing the fact that there’s no cycle lanes.
@zippo: the pavement is most certainly not gold in n.korea
@zippo: The roads look fine in the tiny part of NK that has cameras pointed at it, yeah.
The regime like to keep up appearances in the capital and at the UN DMZ, because that’s what the outside world see, but you’ll find footage online of the state of the rest of the country.
@zippo: this is a very strange comment
@Dolph Styles: I’m a strange kind of person….. it was just a wee bit of sarcasm !!! lighten up lad
@zippo: the road looks fine because there are hardly any cars. and it isnt supposed to be poverty stricken, it is. a desolate place that’s had a famine for the past 10 years
.
@tweetforjunk: sorry,i didn’t realize you lived there. All we ever get is anti-DPRK press here, maybe if there was a bit of media balance I might believe some of the stuff the report.
All things being said they should have fired back at the NK soldiers they expect everyone else to play by the rules except themselves. It’s hard to believe that the regime is going to last much longer.
@Bhiniáimin Ó Beith: Of course, they should have fired back and escalated the defection of one soldier into a firefight that easily could have destabilised the whole armistice and led to the Korean War, round two.
@Larissa Caroline Nikolaus: There are regular firefights along that border. One more would make very little difference.
At least now he is free of that communist sh#tehole.
Who is operating all those cameras?
@Neal Ireland Hello.: US and South Korean army.
@Neal Ireland Hello.: USA murdered lot of its traitors and we cant see any TV footages of it because we are democracy…
@cortisola: I think whatever terrible point you were trying to make was lost in your incoherence.
@cortisola: So you consider leaving or trying to leave an act of Treason? And which traitors have the US murdered lately? Give us some names so we can check it out for ourselves if your statement is factual or not.
@Mick Jordan: When have they stopped. how many countrys have they invaded since 1900?
@Mick Jordan: On April 23, 2015, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest released a statement announcing that Gadahn had been killed, alongside fellow American combatant Ahmed Farouq, in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan on January 19, 2015. You are friend of murderers!
@cortisola: Killed while involved of terrorist activities is not being murdered.
It just shows how much of a giant Concentration Camp North Korea is. Nobody is permitted to leave without Government approval on pain of death. Cuba is the same. And yet there are those here reading this story that will still support these dictatorships.
Don’t see many people running from Democratic societies, risking there lives.
I guess liberals believe alot of West Germans ran into east Germany be for a better be life
Hasn’t Michel Barnier informed Kim Jong-un,that free movement of people is one of the red-lines of the EU?
Are we sure that’s not John Halligan escaping from Nth. Korea after his failed attempt to convince The Rocket Man of the folly of his ways.
I hope the South Koreans watched Homeland!!
Going by the soldiers who shot him.the isle of man could take down nth korea in a fight lol they couldnt hit a barn door with a shovel.
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