Официальные лица заявляют, что северокорейский перебежчик, вероятно, бежал через границу после того, как его обвинили в сексуальном насилии в Южной Корее

Adefector became suspected of evading South Korean border guards by going thru a drainage ditch and swimming abet to North Korea, in a crossing that escalated tensions on the peninsula and led Pyongyang to lock down a city on virus fears.

The 24-twelve months-mature man is believed to possess avoided detection by passing thru a barbed wire-blocked ditch and coming into a Han River estuary to the sea to the west, then swimming abet to North Korea, Kim Jun-rak, a Joint Chiefs of Workers spokesperson, instant a media briefing Monday.

The man became below police investigation over allegations of rape, per Gyeonggi Nambu provincial police company. The defector, who had fled to South Korea in 2017, became booked with out bodily detention final month for sexually assaulting a woman at his dwelling, police added.

The man, who hasn’t been formally named, doesn’t seem to were contaminated with Covid-19, South Korean properly being authorities acknowledged at a separate briefing Monday. It’s no longer acknowledged how a ways the man could well possess swum but the slump could well presumably possess coated quite so much of kilometers.

The crossing comes as North Korea has excoriated South Korean President Moon Jae-in over defector-led activist groups in South Korea sending anti-Kim Jong Un leaflets by balloon north across the border. Final month Kim’s regimeblew upa joint liaison place of job within the North Korean border city of Kaesong that became a symbol of Moon’s rapprochement and instant Seoul that it became “high time” to smash ties.

Cases Suspected

Kim Jong Un ordered Kaesong locked down after officials chanced on a one that could well be contaminated with the coronavirus, the order’s Korean Central News CompanyreportedSunday. The anecdote adds to hypothesis that the virus has reached North Korea even supposing the regime has yet to verify a single case of Covid-19. U.S. and Eastern officials possess acknowledgedthey thinkthat North Korea has cases.

The person illegally returned to North Korea on July 19, prompting the government to launch a probe into the military unit to blame for the crossing with plans to “administer a extreme punishment,” the KCNA anecdote acknowledged.

Eleven North Korean defectors possess returned dwelling from South Korea since 2015, South Korea’s Yonhap News Companyreportedthe Unification Ministry as announcing.

North Korea shut its borders in January as a result of the virus, slamming the brakes on the miniature sincere alternate it became afforded as a result of world sanctions to punish it for its nuclear hands program. The closing extra squeezed a moribund economy set for its preferrred contraction in extra than twenty years, per Fitch Alternatives.

“if the defector is certainly the spark off for the Kaesong lockdown, then North Korea doesn’t have to disclaim infections anymore and could well presumably blame its epidemic on defectors and imported cases from South Korea,” acknowledged Duyeon Kim, a senior adviser on Northeast Asia and nuclear policy for the Global Disaster Neighborhood.

KCNA acknowledged the person had defected to South Korea three years ago, but didn’t provide limited print on the very best design it became that you just’ll need faith in to encounter a border guarded by tens of thousands of military personnel.

Moon has saved no longer off course his plans to produce economic assistance to North Korea but Pyongyang has proven no hobby within the president’s provides. It has been ready to acquire wait on from its veteran allies China and Russia for virus prevention.

Despite the indisputable truth that Moon could well try to make exercise of this incident to present humanitarian assistance, the inter-Korean stalemate is seemingly to stay, acknowledged Choi Kang, vice-president of the Asan Institute for Policy Analysis in Seoul. “This could occasionally act as a barrier, no longer a catalyst for inter-Korean exchanges,” Choi acknowledged.

–With the abet of Sam Kim.

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