South Korean police detained a North Korean defector who tried to return to North Korea in a stolen bus across the heavily fortified border.
The man was arrested on Tuesday on the Reunification Bridge that separates the two countries after ignoring soldiers’ requests to stop and ramming the bus into a roadblock.
Although some 34,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea since the division of the peninsula more than 70 years ago, very few defectors have sought to return to the North.
According to South Korean media reports, the man in his 30s told police that he wanted to return home after experiencing difficulties in South Korea. He reportedly left North Korea about a decade ago.
He reportedly stole the bus from a garage in the northern city of Paju at 01:00 local time on Tuesday (16:00 GMT on Monday) and was arrested half an hour later.
Surveillance footage from the garage showed the man wearing a hat trying to open several cars until he managed to board the bus.
Reports say he was not found to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the incident.
The man, who had worked as a day laborer in Paju and other cities, told police he had accumulated several unpaid fines, according to South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo.
South Korean law prohibits citizens, including North Korean defectors, from crossing the border to North Korea without government authorization. North Korean defectors in South Korea are automatically granted citizenship. If convicted, offenders could be sentenced to up to ten years in prison.
South Korea receives more than 1,000 North Korean defectors every year. By comparison, the total number of defectors who returned to North Korea from 2012 to 2022 was only 31, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry.
Some return or attempt to return, as life for southern defectors sometimes fails to live up to expectations. The average monthly income for North Korean defectors is about 2.3 million won ($1,740; £1,300), according to a survey released by South Korea’s Asiana Foundation on Tuesday.
Others want to go back and visit family.
However, these returns come with risks. Some returnees are imprisoned, while others undergo rigorous re-education in North Korea.
In January 2022, a North Korean defector in his 30s returned to North Korea after spending a year in South Korea. The report quoted South Korean officials as saying he had been struggling to resettle in South Korea because he was “barely making ends meet.”
