A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea across the rivals’ heavily fortified border on Sunday, South Korea’s military said.
The military took custody of the soldier who crossed the central portion of the land border, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. It said the soldier expressed a desire to resettle in South Korea.
It was the first reported defection by a North Korean soldier since a North Korean staff sergeant fled to South Korea via the border’s eastern section in August 2024.
It’s going to be a massive shell shock seeing the south and comparing it to his previous life.
Hope he didn’t leave any family behind.
Chances are he has at least mother, father, siblings, grandparents who will spend the rest of their lives in horrific slave work prison as punishment for their relative defecting.
Kim Jung un doesnt fuck around.
He ran across a minefield. With people shooting at him. I think he deserves a break
So all 155 miles of the border is walled and patrolled? I know there’s a heavily trapped DMZ, 2.5 miles wide, but for all 155 miles? How does that work?
I obviously have zero experience, but I would think a healthy, well equipped person could easily find a hole.
It isn’t the first time someone built a heavily trapped, walled and patrolled border of that size.
Take a look at the Inner German Border. It was over 1300 km (approx. 810 mi) long, and was (average) about 5.5 km wide (a bit more than 3 miles).
From 1974 to 1979, 4956 people attempted to cross it, and only 229 (4.6%) actually made it.
And the other parts of the iron wall weren’t that much better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Czechoslovak_borders_during_the_Cold_War
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Geography limits your options of where to cross.
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Survival equipment is difficult to obtain or learn usage of discretely.
It isn’t like they can just buy camping gear and walk the length of the dmz during vacation to find a weak point.
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“Rival” is definitely the wrong word here, right? That implies that they, like, steal each others’ mascots and compete in a big football game for some dubious prize once a year. If Alabama and Auburn literally shot anyone traveling between the two of them, that’d be one thing, but this is not a “rivalry.” It’s a cold war.
The U.S. and Russia are frequently referred to as rivals as well. Just because you often see the word used in certain contexts doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist in others.
I suppose.
Ah, yes. They must be cold warians.
