More North Korean defections
Yonhap News reports that another North Korean soldier defected across the De-Militarized Zone dividing North and South Korea last week, prompting gunfire from both sides;
The “low-ranking” soldier appeared in front of a guard post on the mid-western front at around 8:04 a.m. amid thick fog, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
After the defection, the North’s border guards approached the military demarcation line (MDL) apparently in search of the defector, a JCS official told reporters.
In response, the South’s troops fired some 20 warning shots at around 9:30 a.m., he said.
Roughly 40 minutes later, there was the sound of several gunshots from the North, but no bullets were found to have crossed the border, he added.
The South Korean Navy also reports that a small wooden boat was discovered after two North Korean men used that boat to defect to the south.
“The Navy found it in waters about 100 kilometers north of Dokdo during a patrol mission,” a ministry official said at a press briefing. “A joint probe into the details of their identities is under way.”
The North Korean men expressed their intent to defect and agreed to abandon the aged and apparently damaged ship, added the official.
In other Nork news, Park In-young, the head of North Korea’s Bureau 131, the agency responsible for military facilities is believed to have been executed after a failed nuclear test and a tunnel collapse.
Category: North Korea
Commander Park in Young.
I got nothing.
Park In-young executed for something he didn’t cause. Yeah, that’s the way to do it. Failed nuke tests and tunnel collapses have nothing to do with poor quality construction or crappy materials, or interference by Fatty Kim da T’ird.
If more defections are taking place this rapidly, things must be worse than ever, but how would we know if we can’t get direct information? The military is the one place Norks are supposed to be able to get food to eat.
They have probably seen your menus and are dying to get over here and eat some of that wonderful food?
“supposed to be.” I would guess (and from reading strategypage.com, etc.) the army get second or third tier of priority after the elite government officials and the security cops. Kinda like the story of the tenant farmer who was suppose to give the landowner a third of the corn or one wagon load out of three. One year they had a bad year and the landowner wanted to know where his corn was; the tenant farmer told him that his wagon was empty. You can’t get it if there ain’t none.
These guys are voting with their stomachs.
Yes, but then they become ROK citizens and vote left, because socialism is the best system evah, but has never been done the right way, or by the right smart people.
“…but no bullets were found to have crossed the border, he added.”
How in the world would you know that?
I’m thinking that the guards fired in the air to create the illusion that they tried to stop the defector.
Or a Nork officer, fearing he might be the next one to eat a mortar round on the parade field, decided to shoot a few guys to placate NDtBF’s temper.
That’s kind of what I was thinking.
I suspect you are right, Jonn.
I wouldn’t doubt that for a second. I wonder how many Nork Troops that were around during that defection via Panmunjom have either eaten lead or gone to a Nork Gulag?
The capabilities to detect intrusions of the Demarcation line were technically advanced in the 1980’s when I was there. anything larger than a Songbird was detectable.I will venture to guess that detection of rounds fired, direction of muzzle, and flight of rounds(any caliber) is far more advanced than you and I can conceive of. No offense, but I trust the assessment of those on the ground.
Another higher-up in the Norkie bureaucracy dead, like in Norkiland must be a special kind of hell.
If you get on the wrong side of Rocket-boi, bad things are going to happen to you and your family, regardless of whether you are really at fault. It is the Commie totalitarian way.
😀 😀 😀
Blame it on the Choco pies….
“North Korean defector will get free Choco Pies for life, report says”
http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2017/12/19/north-korean-defector-will-get-free-choco-pies-for-life-report-says.html?ICID=ref_fark
Any of y’all with ROK service could say, but are defections up or is it just that they’re getting more attention?
Like how every few years the media gets a wild hair up their tail pipes and all you hear about are shark attacks, or that brain eating amoeba, or some equally remote statistically insignificant event.
I was there in the early nineties and there were shooting matches between the Norks and the ROKs every now and then, I’m sure that still goes on from time to time and the snooze media only reports on it when they want to.
I was there in the mid-80s and during my year we had some Chicoms defect in an IL-28 Beagle that ran out of fuel outside Kunsan and a Chinese variant of the MiG-19 that landed at Suwon I believe. I don’t remember any Norki defectors.
USAFRetired,
When were you there? I was with the Wolfpack 84-85, 8EMS Ammo…
Mike
85-86 621 TCS – MCRC
Pretty sure the MIG 19 landed at K-16 in Songnam (also known as Seoul AFB). Which is kind of funny as that’s where the ROK has it’s SF guys (and girls) stationed-707th Special Missions Battalion. Some high ranking ROK generals got an early retirement over that. Flew right under the defense radar network for Seoul. Since we (US) were just tenants there, we of course didn’t hear a whole lot. One of the civilian admin workers on base told me she had heard that the Chinese pilot was very “good rooking” (No joke)