SEOUL: A North Korean soldier defected to the South on Thursday across the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula, Seoul’s defence ministry said. The “low-ranking” soldier made his way across the central part of the land border, a ministry spokesman said. Footage showed the badly injured man being pulled to safety by two South Korean soldiers who crawled to reach him just south of the demarcation line. Thursday’s defection was the fourth by a soldier across the DMZ this year. Away from Panmunjom, the rest of the 4-kilometre-wide DMZ bristles with barbed wire and is littered with minefields, making any crossing extremely hazardous.

Source: New Strait Times December 21, 2017 02:00 UTC