On the first day of the new year, the North Korean incident occurred. The Joint Chiefs of Staff announced on the 2nd that one person presumed to be a South Korean defected to North Korea through the military demarcation line (MDL) on the Eastern Front in Gangwon Province. The military authorities are said to have been unaware of this situation for three hours, and critics say that there was a hole in the North Korean surveillance network.
An official from the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, "Last night around 9:20 pm, an unidentified person was captured with surveillance equipment in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in the eastern region. "We sent operational troops to secure new recruits and confirmed that during the DMZ operation, the personnel crossed the MDL and defected to North Korea around 10:40 pm," he explained.
According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the subsequent verification process, the scene of the person crossing the GOP (general outpost) fence was captured by the scientific surveillance system around 6:40 pm on the same day. However, the military was unaware of this situation for about three hours until the North Korean defectors crossed the fence and started the operation to secure new recruits.
It also failed to secure new recruits for North Korean defectors. Regarding this, the official acknowledged, "There were insufficient parts in the initial response unit's confirmation, such as the guards did not recognize (the North Koreans crossing the fence) at the time."
An official from the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, "In order to protect our people, we sent a notice to North Korea this morning (via the military communication line in the West Sea area)." It is said that it was not known whether the North Korean defectors were alive or dead. “There has been no unusual trend in the North Korean military so far,” he added.
The unit where this incident occurred is the 22nd Division, where the 'knock defection' in 2012, the 'barbed defection' in November 2020, and the 'flippers defection' in February of last year occurred in a row. The military authorities even installed a scientific security system such as high-performance surveillance cameras, but this time too, they could not find North Korean defectors in advance.
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