N.Korean soldier defects to S.Korea

Seoul, Dec 21 (IANS) A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea on Thursday, crossing on the western side of the border, without any exchange of fire between troops from both sides, Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

The low-ranking North Korean soldier appeared in front of a South Korean border guard post around 8.04 a.m., a Defence Ministry spokesman told Efe news.

The soldier crossed to the South at a point of the "western slope" of the DMZ, the militarised border that divides the two countries.

This is the fourth North Korean soldier to defect to the South this year and the first one following the dramatic desertion of a soldier who was shot five times by the North Korean Army last month during his flight through the Joint Security Area (JSA), the only border area where soldiers of the two Koreas are stationed face to face.

However, in this case the South Korean troops have detected "no unusual movements" of the North Korean Army, according to the spokesman.

In a separate development, the Unification Ministry on Thursday announced that two other North Korean civilians defected to the South on Wednesday by boat.

After the vessel was detected by a Navy patrol in the Sea of Japan, its two crew members expressed their desire to defect.

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