Two North Koreans, including one soldier, defected to South Korea Saturday by way of the Yellow Sea, according to South Korean media.
The South Korean military spotted a small boat just off Baengnyeong Island near the western inter-Korean sea border, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing a government source. The two North Koreans on board expressed a desire to defect to South Korea. This incident marks the first reported defection following the landmark inter-Korean summit on April 27.
Saturday’s unexpected defection is likely to anger an already aggravated North Korea, which fiercely lashed out at the South Wednesday over joint military drills with the U.S. North Korea cancelled talks with South Korea indefinitely in response, with Pyongyang specifically criticizing the deployment of strategic nuclear assets for the Max Thunder exercises.
No such assets participated in the drills, Defense officials at the Pentagon told The Daily Caller News Foundation. (RELATED: North Korea’s Pitching A Huge Fit About Things That Aren’t Even There)
Pyongyang argues that unless Seoul changes its ways, it will never sit down with this South Korean government again.
“Unless the serious situation, which led to the suspension of the north-south high-level talks, is settled, it will never be easy to sit face to face again with the present regime of South Korea,” Ri Son Gwon, chairman of North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification, said in a statement carried by North Korea’s state-run media Thursday.
“The present South Korean authorities have been clearly proven to be an ignorant and incompetent group devoid of the elementary sense of the present situation,” he added. (RELATED: Fragile Korean Peace In Jeopardy As North Korea Slams ‘Ignorant And Incompetent’ South Korean Government)
While North Korea tends to condemn defectors in general, there has traditionally been greater contempt for members of the armed services, as well as senior leadership.
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