Hostile barrier: The Demilitarized Zone, a 4km-wide tape stretching 250km across the waist of the Korean Peninsula, has served as the border between the two Koreas since the 1950-53 Korean War. – Reuters
SOUTH KOREAN defence authorities suffered a serious loss of face at the beginning of the year when a young man crossed the high fences on the heavily guarded Demilitarized Zone to escape to North Korea a little more than a year after he made a similar adventure in a reverse direction. The incident tarnished the finale of President Moon Jae-in’s five-year epic of inter-Korean reconciliation.
The Defence Ministry identified him as a Mr X who had “defected” to the South from the North in November 2020 through the same section of the north-eastern border. Army guards failed to detect the single traveller when he sneaked first southward and then northward through multiple obstacles, to expose loopholes in what is supposed to be a watertight surveillance/deterrence system.
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