South Korea’s military faces criticism over security declines along the country’s heavily armed border with North Korea after a man managed to cross the south, despite being seen several times by surveillance cameras.
The man, dressed in a neoprene suit and swimmer, allegedly swam in South Korea in the early hours of February 16, but avoided capture for more than six hours, according to Yonhap news agency.
After reaching the South Korean coast via the East Sea, he allegedly crawled through a drainage tunnel inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ), hid his suit of moisture and flippers, and walked, undetected, by -along a road of about 5 km.
He was detained after a guard saw him through a CCTV camera and alerted his superiors.
When the manhunt began, the man had been picked up five times by surveillance cameras along the coast. Alarms sounded twice, but the soldiers did not notice the warnings and did not take any action. He was able to continue his journey after three fence chambers near a front-line military post failed to set off an alarm.
“The duty officers on duty did not follow the proper procedures and failed to detect the unidentified man,” said a chief of staff official. [JCS] said Yonhap.
An investigation into the incident found that a guard in charge of coastal surveillance equipment was addressing a computer problem and dismissed the alarms as technical errors, while a second military guard had been distracted by a telephone.
The military’s embarrassment worsened when it appeared that he did not even know about the drainage tunnel through which the escapee passed during his flight from North Korea.
The man, who said he wanted to break down, made the dangerous journey into the depths of winter, raising questions about how he survived so long in the icy waters. JCS said he wore a lined jacket inside his suit, adding that the tides would have worked in his favor.
Officials declined to give his name, describing him only as a 20-year-old fisherman. Reports said he may have tried to surrender to South Korean civilians, fearing border police would immediately force him to return to the north.
The South Korean military is already facing criticism over security breaches after a North Korean civilian avoided capture for hours after crossing barbed wire fences in November last year.
He was detained after surveillance equipment saw him near the town of Goseong, at the eastern end of the DMZ, a 248 km (155 mile) long strip of land strewn with me that separated the two Koreas from the end 1950-53. war.
In 2019, four North Koreans crossed the undetected maritime border in a wooden boat before reaching a port on the east coast of South Korea.
Only a handful of the 31,000 North Koreans who crossed to the south did so through the heavily guarded DMZ. The vast majority escape through North Korea’s long border with China and reach the south through a third country, often Thailand.