A North Korean man has crossed the heavily fortified demilitarized zone to the South. The apparent defection is unusual because most people escape via China, not the heavily guarded border separating the two Koreas.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on Friday said a North Korean civilian had defected across the heavily mined land border into South Korea, with the help of the South’s military in a 20-hour operation.

While tens of thousands have fled North Korea to the South since the peninsula was divided in the 1950s, most take an indirect route through China and a third country like Thailand.

North Korean defector: ‘We are not traitors’ To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

What do we know about the crossing?

The man was first detected by South Korean military surveillance equipment sometime between 3 and 4 a.m. (1800-1900 GMT/UTC on Wednesday) on Thursday near a shallow stream inside the DMZ.

He had mostly stayed still during daylight hours to avoid capture and was at times difficult to track because of the thick forest, the JCS said.

South Korean troops approached him that night and eventually made contact near the Military Demarcation Line, the de facto border within the DMZ.

“The military identified the individual near the MDL, conducted tracking and surveillance,” the JCS said. Troops then “successfully carried out a standard guiding operation to secure custody.”

When the man first noticed the soldiers, he asked, “Who are you?” The troops replied, “We are the South Korean military. We’ll guide you to safety.”

The man crossed the MDL and joined the South Korean troops, who then escorted him south out of the DMZ.

The entire operation, which involved a significant number of troops navigating dense vegetation and landmine hazards, took about 20 hours, the JCS said.

How do most people escape North Korea?

About 34,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the Korean War in the 1950s.

However, fewer North Koreans have recently been able to cross the DMZ successfully.

Crossings directly through the 248-kilometer (155-mile) long, 4-kilometer-wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) are extremely rare and dangerous due to land mines, dense vegetation and constant military surveillance.

The heavily fortified buffer zone between North and South Korea — about 240 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide — serves as the de facto border between the two countries, which technically remain at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

While tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled their impoverished and tightly controlled homeland over the decades, most do so by entering China across the Yalu River in the west and the Tumen River in the east.

To avoid being unwillingly repatriated to the North by China, they then travel through third countries before reaching South Korea.

South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung has made efforts to rebuild trust with the North, since taking office last month, including shutting down loudspeakers blasting propaganda against North Korea along the border.

Edited by: Sean Sinico

A North Korean man has crossed the heavily fortified demilitarized zone to the South. The apparent defection is unusual because most people escape via China, not the heavily guarded border separating the two Koreas.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on Friday said a North Korean civilian had defected across the heavily mined land border into South Korea, with the help of the South’s military in a 20-hour operation.

While tens of thousands have fled North Korea to the South since the peninsula was divided in the 1950s, most take an indirect route through China and a third country like Thailand.

North Korean defector: ‘We are not traitors’ To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

What do we know about the crossing?

The man was first detected by South Korean military surveillance equipment sometime between 3 and 4 a.m. (1800-1900 GMT/UTC on Wednesday) on Thursday near a shallow stream inside the DMZ.

He had mostly stayed still during daylight hours to avoid capture and was at times difficult to track because of the thick forest, the JCS said.

South Korean troops approached him that night and eventually made contact near the Military Demarcation Line, the de facto border within the DMZ.

“The military identified the individual near the MDL, conducted tracking and surveillance,” the JCS said. Troops then “successfully carried out a standard guiding operation to secure custody.”

When the man first noticed the soldiers, he asked, “Who are you?” The troops replied, “We are the South Korean military. We’ll guide you to safety.”

The man crossed the MDL and joined the South Korean troops, who then escorted him south out of the DMZ.

The entire operation, which involved a significant number of troops navigating dense vegetation and landmine hazards, took about 20 hours, the JCS said.

How do most people escape North Korea?

About 34,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the Korean War in the 1950s.

However, fewer North Koreans have recently been able to cross the DMZ successfully.

Crossings directly through the 248-kilometer (155-mile) long, 4-kilometer-wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) are extremely rare and dangerous due to land mines, dense vegetation and constant military surveillance.

The heavily fortified buffer zone between North and South Korea — about 240 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide — serves as the de facto border between the two countries, which technically remain at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

While tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled their impoverished and tightly controlled homeland over the decades, most do so by entering China across the Yalu River in the west and the Tumen River in the east.

To avoid being unwillingly repatriated to the North by China, they then travel through third countries before reaching South Korea.

South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung has made efforts to rebuild trust with the North, since taking office last month, including shutting down loudspeakers blasting propaganda against North Korea along the border.

Edited by: Sean Sinico

New South Korean president vows peace with North Korea, better China relationship

A North Korean who crossed the heavily fortified land border into the South has been detained and taken into custody, Seoul’s military said Friday.

The North Korean, identified as a male civilian, managed to cross the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) in the midwestern part of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on Thursday, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The MDL is the de facto border, which runs through the middle of the DMZ — the border area separating the two Koreas, which is one of the most heavily mined places on earth.

A South Korean soldier is seen in a watchtower at the border with North Korea, divided by the Imjin River in Paju, north of Seoul, on June 5, 2025. PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images

“The military identified the individual near the MDL, conducted tracking and surveillance,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or JCS, said in a statement.

It then “successfully carried out a standard guiding operation to secure custody,” it added.

The operation took about 20 hours, according to Seoul, after the man was detected by a military surveillance device sometime between 3:00 and 4:00am local time Thursday.

The mission to safely guide him to the South involved a considerable number of South Korean troops, the JCS said, and took place in an area difficult to navigate due to dense vegetation and landmine risks.

The man stayed mostly still during the day, and South Korea’s military approached him at night.

He willingly followed the troops after they offered to guide him safely out of the DMZ, according to the JCS.

It said “relevant authorities” will investigate the detailed circumstances of the incident.

North Koreans are typically handed over to Seoul’s intelligence agency for screening when they arrive in the South.

History of defections

The incident comes after a North Korean soldier defected to the South by crossing the MDL in August last year.

Also last year, another North Korean defected to the South across the de facto border in the Yellow Sea, arriving on Gyodong island off the peninsula’s west coast near the border between the Koreas.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the peninsula was divided by war in the 1950s, with most going overland to neighboring China first, then entering a third country such as Thailand before finally making it to the South.

Defections across the land border that divides the peninsula are relatively rare.

The number of successful escapes dropped significantly from 2020 after the North sealed its borders – purportedly with shoot-on-sight orders along the land frontier with China – to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

No unusual activities by the North Korean military have been detected, the JCS said Friday.

South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung, who took office last month, has vowed a more dovish approach towards Pyongyang compared with his hawkish predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol.

“Politics and diplomacy must be handled without emotion and approached with reason and logic,” Lee said Thursday.

“Completely cutting off dialogue is really a foolish thing to do.”

This week the Justice Department revealed that North Korea, which recently opened a new coastal tourist site with room for 20,000 guests, has been using remote information technology workers employed unwittingly by U.S. companies to fund its weapons programs.

The unarmed man was found in the central-west border section before being led to safety by South Korean troops.

A North Korean man has crossed the heavily fortified land border with South Korea and is now being held in custody, the South Korean military has confirmed.

The unarmed individual was located on Thursday in the central-west section of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), before being guided by South Korean troops to safety, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Seoul’s army carried out “a standard guiding operation to secure custody”, a process that involved a considerable number of soldiers, it said.

After the North Korean was detected early on Thursday morning, the task of bringing him to safety took about 20 hours to complete, the Joint Chiefs of Staff added.

He was mainly still during the day, with South Korean soldiers approaching him at night, it noted.

Seoul has not commented on whether it viewed the border crossing as a defection attempt.

There were no immediate signs of unusual military activity in North Korea, the South Korean army said.

Crossing between the two Koreas is relatively rare and extremely risky, as the border area is strewn with mines.

It is more common for defectors to first travel across North Korea’s border with China, before heading on to South Korea.

Last August, a North Korean soldier reportedly defected to the South and was taken into custody in the northeastern county of Goseong.

And then in April, South Korean troops fired warning shots after roughly 10 North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the military demarcation line. Pyongyang’s officers returned to their own territory without returning fire, Seoul said.

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The crossing on Thursday comes a month after the liberal politician Lee Jae-myung was elected as the new South Korean president, following months of political chaos, which began with the conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol’s short-lived attempt to impose martial law in December.

Lee has taken a different stance from his predecessor on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, promising to “open a communication channel with North Korea and establish peace on the Korean Peninsula through talks and cooperation”.

“Politics and diplomacy must be handled without emotion and approached with reason and logic,” he said on Thursday. “Completely cutting off dialogue is really a foolish thing to do.”

As part of his attempt to rebuild trust with his neighbour, Lee has banned loudspeaker broadcasts at the border and attempted to stop activists flying balloons with propaganda into North Korea.

However, it remains to be seen whether Kim will cooperate.

In response to Yoon’s decision to strengthen military alliances with Washington, DC, and Tokyo, Kim called South Korea his country’s “principal enemy” last January.

Diplomatic efforts have stalled on the Korean Peninsula since the collapse of denuclearisation talks between Washington and Pyongyang in 2019 during the first US President Donald Trump administration, after a series of Trump-Kim summits, globally watched spectacles that bore little concrete progress.

SEOUL, July 4 (UPI) — A North Korean man who identified himself as a civilian crossed the heavily fortified military demarcation line between the two Koreas and was taken into custody, the South’s military said Friday.

The individual was picked up by the South Korean military on Thursday night, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a text message to reporters. No motive was immediately given for his crossing.

“The military identified the individual in the MDL area, tracked and monitored him, conducted a normal induction operation and secured the individual,” the JCS said. “The relevant organizations will investigate the details of the southward movement.”

“There have been no unusual movements by the North Korean military as of now,” the message added.

In a background briefing with reporters, a JCS official said the North Korean man was first detected by a military monitoring device on the South Korean side of the border around 3 a.m. Thursday.

The operation to secure and guide the individual out of the demilitarized zone took 20 hours total, the official said.

The two Koreas are separated by the 2.5-mile-wide DMZ, which is one of the most heavily fortified and mined borders on earth.

A North Korean soldier defected across the DMZ in August, but direct land crossings have been historically rare. Most escapees traverse the northern border with China.

Over 34,000 North Koreans have fled to the South to escape dire economic conditions and the country’s brutally repressive regime. However, arrivals plummeted after Pyongyang sealed its borders and ramped up security in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of North Korean defectors who arrived in South Korea reached 236 in 2024, up 20% from the previous year, according to data from the South’s Unification Ministry.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung was briefed on the crossing, spokesperson Kang Yu-jun told reporters Friday. Lee has moved to lower tensions in the border area during his first month in office and recently ordered the suspension of propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts at the DMZ.