North Korean soldier defects to South Korea throughout the closely fortified border

A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea throughout the closely fortified border on Sunday (October 19, 2025), South Korea’s army stated.

The army took custody of the soldier who crossed the central portion of the land border, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff stated in a press release. It stated the soldier expressed a want to resettle in South Korea.

It was the primary reported defection by a North Korean soldier since a North Korean workers sergeant fled to South Korea through the border’s japanese part in August 2024.

Despite the 2 border crossings, it is not frequent for North Koreans to defect through the land border.

Unlike its official identify, the Demilitarised Zone, the 248 km-long, 4 km-wide border is guarded by land mines, tank traps, barbed wire fences, and fight troops.

In 2017, when a fleeing North Korean soldier sprinted throughout the border, North Korean troopers fired about 40 rounds earlier than South Korean troopers might drag the injured soldier to security.

A overwhelming majority of about 34,000 North Koreans who’ve fled to South Korea because the finish of the 1950-53 Korean War got here through China, which shares a protracted, porous border with North Korea.

Relations between the 2 Koreas stay strained, with North Korea repeatedly rejecting outreach by South Korea’s liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who took workplace in June with a vow to revive reconciliation between the rivals.