North Korea has shot and promptly cremated a South Korean civilian employee who disappeared earlier this week near the disputed western maritime boundary between the two countries, South Korea’s military says.
The South Korean Defense Ministry said Thursday that the man was interrogated in North Korean waters, then shot, then doused with oil and burned, apparently on orders from his superiors. South Korean officials cited “diverse intelligence,” but did not reveal how they obtained the details.
This incident comes at a time of relative calm in inter-Korean relations. Pyongyang had heightened tensions with Seoul earlier in the year, but North Korean leader Kim Jong-un unexpectedly called off his pressure campaign in June. Since then, North Korea has been focused on domestic issues such as the new coronavirus pandemic and devastating floods.
Now, there are fears that the shooting could once again turn inter-Korean relations upside down.
Our military strongly condemns this barbaric act and strongly urges the DPRK to explain and punish the perpetrators,” said Ahn Young-ho, chief of operations of the South Korean Joint Staff, at a press conference. “We also warned North Korea that it bears full responsibility for this incident.”
South Korean defense officials said the North’s military has yet to respond to Seoul’s request for more information. Pyongyang has also yet to comment publicly on the incident.
The unidentified 47-year-old employee, who works for South Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, disappeared Monday while on duty on a patrol boat near Yeonpyeong Island, which borders South Korea. He was reported missing about 10 kilometers south of the de facto North Korean maritime boundary line.
The circumstances of the man’s disappearance are unclear. South Korean military officials believe he may have been attempting to flee to North Korea, noting that his colleagues found only his shoes on the boat. According to Yonhap News Agency, the man was recently divorced and had been heavily in debt.
Events in History
The man isn’t the only person who has recently fled from South Korea to North Korea.
Earlier this week, South Korean police said they arrested a defector who was trying to escape back to North Korea through a military training ground in the border county of Tiwon.
In July, a 24-year-old man who fled North Korea swam back to the country after being accused of rape in South Korea. That incident prompted North Korea to seal off the border area, falsely claiming it was for coronavirus concerns.
General Robert Abrams, the U.S. military commander in South Korea, said earlier this month that North Korea has since issued a “shoot-to-kill” order to prevent the new coronavirus from entering the country from China.
The safety zone related to the new coronavirus was first reported by the Seoul-based news website Daily North Korea, which sources information from North Korea. The media said that the new rules stipulate that anyone who “violates the rules or disrupts public order near the border will be shot without warning. It also said that these rules apply to all areas of the country.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said, “North Korea is in a state of lockdown almost as if it were in wartime to prevent a new outbreak of coronary pneumonia.
Rising Tensions
The shooting came at an awkward time for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who in a video address to the United Nations General Assembly this week called on North Korea and South Korea to sign a declaration of end of war.
The left-leaning Moon had been eager to improve relations with Pyongyang before he leaves office in 2022. He has been trying to convince North Korea to return to the dialogue and cooperation that characterized the beginning of his five-year term.
South Korea’s presidential office, Cheong Wa Dae, “strongly condemned” the killing in a statement, saying “it violates basic international and humanitarian norms.
North Korea cut off channels of communication with South Korea earlier this year and blew up the two countries’ de facto embassies after complaining that South Korean militants had released balloons containing anti-Pyongyang propaganda on the other side of the border.
Analysts warn that this has made it harder to cool tensions.
Yang Moo-in said, “Now that there are no channels of communication and no dialogue between the two Koreas, relations between the two countries can hardly get worse than this.”
Technically, the two countries have been at war since the 1950s, when the conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Despite occasional tensions, deaths, especially those involving civilians, are rare. The last time a South Korean civilian was shot in North Korea was in 2008, when a North Korean soldier killed a South Korean tourist who was wandering into a restricted area at a mountain resort.
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