Unidentified person enters North Korea from South in rare border breach: Seoul

Either a North Korean spy sneaking back into the North. Or a North Korean refugee attempting to sneak back into their home country.

My money would be on either of those two possibilities.

Well, it's a new year. A new life in a new country. Have a great time!

Maybe he had some friends in the North with whom he wanted to celebrate the New Year. Friendships can be developed and maintained inspite of political leanings and loyalties, like we saw in the Korean movie Joint Security Area.

Michael MachidaToday  02:36 pm JST

Well, it's a new year. A new life in a new country. Have a great time!

BION there have been a few defectors to the North in the past. A few UN GIs have defected for whatever dumb reason.

Enjoy your holiday in the sun, fella!

It was confirmed the unidentified person has been detected entering a heavily fortified border in an extremely rare incident.

Clearly the north Korean military surveillance authority is riddled with embarrassment

How audacious a person would dare to cross the DMZ into a heavily fortified country like North Korea .

With all their high tech surveillance and land mines .

I suspect there's more to this story than has been revealed.

It’s “Wrong Way Charlie”

(MAS*H reference)

who cares

Interesting kind of a suicide gamble like those wing suit base jumpers, while others only play normal, Russian roulette or simply jump before an incoming train or from a bridge and such. So it’s a high risk bet on new life experiences or immediate death as outcome.

A North Korean operative coming in. Proof is that the person wasn't shot by the NK side, and SK won't release any identity information.

OssanAmerica....

I was thinking the same thing. I'm sure not all the NKs defecting south are genuine. It would be easy to plant some undercover operatives. Maybe one went back the hard way. Or maybe I've been watching too many James Bond movies?

Agree, NK spy returning was my first thought. Having said that there are idiots in any country so just possibly he wanted to flee the South for the workers paradise of North Korea?

There are more and more of these stories about people in South Korea "escaping" to North Korea. If South Korea is a such capitalist paradise, why don't they let people freely go to North Korea if they want?

See ya! Wouldn't wanna be ya!

Will his excuse be ‘I was drunk and don’t remember’?

Maybe he was a drunk guys and went to wrong street.

There's a mistake in the map. The Yellow Sea should read "West Sea (Yellow Sea)" since this map apparently is made for Koreans and the official international name of the Korean East Sea, the Sea of Japan is put in parantheses.

I don't think we'll be hearing from them again.

I think the person was a mole perhaps he worked both sides of the border which meant he could come and go as he please. SK said hey NK cease fire agent X is on his way back

If South Korea is a such capitalist paradise, why don't they let people freely go to North Korea if they want?

As a blanket statement that isn't entirely true. There once were regular group tours of South Koreans to visit Kaesong and Kumgang through the Kumgang Special Tourist Zone, but those ended when a South Korean tourist was shot by a North Korean. Technically North Korea law allows travelers from the south to visit but the reality is that the very last thing the DPRK wants is the influence of South Koreans in their society. In DPRK it is not only highly illegal to view South Korean TV shows but even using South Korea slang can get one sent to a labor camp. The wealth and freedom of South Koreans is considered a major threat to their rule by the Korean Workers Party.

KariHaruka

Either a North Korean spy sneaking back into the North. Or a North Korean refugee attempting to sneak back into their home country.

My money would be on either of those two possibilities.

A spy is unlikely to want to create attention, and a refugee would know that a death sentence awaits him on the other side, so I keep money away from yours.

Over the years, there have been several Jenkins type individuals who crossed into NK, so this could be anything.

RecklessJan. 2  04:14 pm JST

Defecting to North Korea is definitely not on my bucket list. Maybe this is an elaborate suicide plan?

There has been cases in America where police shoot a suspect who commits 'suicide by cop'.

A spy is unlikely to want to create attention, and a refugee would know that a death sentence awaits him on the other side, so I keep money away from yours.

Over the years, there have been several Jenkins type individuals who crossed into NK, so this could be anything.

A few years ago a GI who defected int NK during the Cold War was held and then indoctrinated to be a loyal North Korean with all that Communism crap. He married a Japanese woman who was also a prisoner there. Decades later they managed to leave NK via Japan but when he came back to the US he had a court martial awaiting him and he got a bad discharge. He passed away a few years ago in the USA.

You know it wasn't all that long ago that a ferry ran between Niigata and Wonsan carrying Japan born Koreans, who despite being born in Japan were not considered to be Japanese citizens and thus had to chose either North or South Korean citizenship, on visits to North Korea. Most of the passengers were North Korean zainichi visiting relatives or students of a Chongryon school on a study trip. Ferry service ended in 2006 when Japan banned North Korean ships from Japanese waters over concerns the ferry was being used to smuggle drugs into Japan, as a conduit for espionage activities and to ship sensitive militarily useful hardware to North Korea.

@P. Smith

kennyGToday  05:15 pm JST

who cares

People who value the integrity of their national borders.

Care more those who got abducted or unwillingly forced to cross such a border

This is one giant failure of logic. It assumes the South knew/knows the identity of this person and that the North has soldiers stationed along every meter of the border.

Do you think this person swiped an ID card at the surveillance post that detected this person?

Do you think the North has soldiers stationed along the border to the degree that every meter is under surveillance?

…

The individual has been in a dead end job in South Korea and he’s had enough.

Before the defection a neighbor noticed his nearly new bedding being dumped and felt like asking him for it but did not.

Strange that South Koreans don’t communicate well just like the Japanese don’t know their neighbors-sad…