The South Korean military faced a lot of criticism after a North Korean defector managed to wander undisturbed for six hours. However, the man was photographed by multiple cameras.
The North Korean reportedly swam to South Korea in a diving suit and flippers very early in the morning on February 16, the news agency reported. Yonhap. He then crawled through a sewage tunnel under the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. He hid his wetsuit and flippers and started walking. He eventually traveled three miles and managed to avoid being caught for six hours.
It was a security guard who finally spotted him through the camera and raised the alarm. At that time, North Korea had already been photographed with five cameras, two of which raised the alarm. However, South Korean soldiers did not respond to warnings.
It appears from the army that the Night Shift did not comply with the imposed measures. The ranger who had to watch the coast was going to be working on a computer problem when the system issued the warnings. Eliminate them as technical errors. A second guard was distracted because he was only on the phone.
Unknown tunnel
Criticism intensified when it became apparent that the tunnel used by the defector was unknown even to the South Korean military. The man in his twenties says he is a defector. He is said to have sneaked past the South Korean soldiers because he was afraid they would send him back, but he stated that he would have known himself later to South Korean civilians.
It is the second time in a few months that a dissident has outpaced the South Korean army. In November, a North Korean national avoided arrest for more than two hours after he managed to cross barbed wire in the DMZ.
Some 31,000 North Koreans have already defected to the south. Only a few of them did so through the maximum security DMZ. The majority of them smuggle through China and then fly to South Korea via a third country, often Thailand.
