Five North Koreans in a small boat crossed the sea border into South Korean waters Saturday, a Coast Guard official said, in an apparent bid to defect to the South.
The five people, including four men and one woman, have expressed their wish to live in the South as defectors, the Yonhap news agency reported.
“Coast guards guided the boat to safety at (the eastern port of) Mukho,” a South Korean coast guard official told AFP.
Government authorities were questioning the five North Koreans, he added. [AFP]
A second defector has crossed over the DMZ in a week:
A North Korean man defected to South Korea on Sunday after crossing the border, Seoul’s military said.
He was spotted at the northern part of the mouth of the Han River in Gimpo, just west of Seoul, according to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
The JCS said the man, in his early 20s, was spotted around 2:30 a.m. Sunday near the observation post of the Second Marine Division. Questioning is under way to find out what caused him to flee to the South.
The man is said to have swum his way south with plastic foam pieces on both shoulders to stay afloat. The JCS said he was discovered at a particularly narrow stretch in the river. [Yonhap]
The information war being fought inside North Korea by activists continues:
A group of North Korean defectors in South Korea on Saturday sent hundreds of thousands of anti-Pyongyang leaflets via helium balloons across the inter-Korean border in time for the 105th birth anniversary of the North’s late founder Kim Il Sung.
The Fighters for Free North Korea said its members sent some 300,000 leaflets from a mountain in Gimpo, just west of Seoul, starting at 5 a.m., condemning the North Korean regime and its role in the assassination of leader Kim Jong-un’s elder half brother, Kim Jong-nam, in February in Malaysia.
Besides the leaflets, the 10 gas-filled balloons also contained 2,000 one-dollar bills, 1,000 USB storage devices, 1,000 DVDs and 500 booklets, the group said.
Large placards attached to the balloons featured photos of Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-nam, which were titled “murderer” and “dead person,” respectively.
The group said the leaflets contained all the details of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam which occurred at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Feb. 13, as well as criticism of the Pyongyang regime. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Unlike many other places in the world a popular uprising in North Korea I don’t think will do much. This is because the Kim regime will just kill the people and then pretend it didn’t happen just like what their primary sponsors in Beijing did at Tiananmen Square back in 1989. What I do see the outside information flowing in doing is discrediting the regime with the North Korean public. This would make it easier for someone in the military down the road perhaps to launch a coup with little public resistance:
Thae Yong-ho
North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to Britain has told a group of reporters that a “popular uprising” against North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is imminent. Thae Yong Ho, who defected to South Korea in August of 2016, said that sanctions against the regime and its inability to control the flow of information about the outside world were weakening its grip on authority.
Thae’s comments came during a press conference in Seoul, the first time he has spoken to international media since his defection.
During the press conference, Thae, who speaks fluent English, declared that “Kim Jong-Un’s days are numbered,” as information about the outside world becomes more accessible. “Low-level dissent or criticism of the regime, until recently unthinkable, is becoming more frequent,” he added. [Yahoo News]
