North Korean Soldier Pulls Off Risky Defection

A soldier from North Korea managed to defect to South Korea on Tuesday by making a risky trek across the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries, reports Reuters. The soldier is believed to be a staff sergeant in his 20s, and the Wall Street Journal reports that South Korean soldiers guided him through the final part of the journey. It's believed to be the first defection by an active-duty soldier—he was in uniform—in five years. However, the Guardian notes that a North Korean citizen made it across the maritime border of the Yellow Sea earlier this month. The defector did so by foot, at low tide.

Kim Jong Un has gone to great lengths to bar all defections, including by building new walls and guard posts, laying land mines, and issuing shoot-on-sight orders at the border. These pandemic-era measures resulted in a steep drop in the roughly 1,000 defections per year before the pandemic to about 200 annually now. But the numbers have been steadily rising again, especially in "elite" defections of, say, diplomats and students, according to the South's Ministry of Unification. The Journal provides a big-picture analysis: The rise "in defections from North Korea's protected classes are reinforcing outside assessments that Kim is contending with internal discontent that could ultimately threaten his grip on power." (More North Korea stories.)