Escaping real repression.
A North Korean soldier fled across the heavily fortified frontier Saturday, the military said, a rare escape that presents the first test of recent military tension-reduction measures by the two adversaries.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, reaffirmed his plans to hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as diplomatic efforts to persuade the communist state to give up its nuclear weapons have stalled.
South Korean troops guided the North Korean defector to safety after surveillance equipment detected him crossing an eastern section of the so-called Military Demarcation Line that bisects the peninsula, the military said in a text message.
The military said no unusual North Korean military activity was reported on Saturday.
The military said it will question the soldier about how he escaped across the border, a 2.5-mile wide, 155-mile long buffer zone that’s lined with barbed wire and filled with land mines.
The defection came just over a year after another North Korean soldier dashed across the border in the truce village of Panmunjom under a hail of gunfire from his former comrades.
More than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to the South since the 1950-53 war on the peninsula ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty. But most fled via China and other countries to avoid heavy border security.
Saturday’s escape occurred after both sides demolished front-line guard posts and swept for mines in a section of the Demilitarized Zone as part of an ambitious plan to disarm the area.