North Korean defector who swam South across river returned same way three years later, fleeing sexual assault allegations
- North Korea has accused the man of illegally crossing the shared border last week with symptoms of Covid-19
- According to South Korean police, a female defector in her 20s filed a complaint on June 12, accusing him sexually assaulting her at his home
South Korea has identified the man only by his surname, Kim, and said he was the “runaway” who North Korea accuses of illegally crossing their shared border last week with symptoms of Covid-19.
Facing a sexual assault investigation, Kim evaded hi-tech South Korean border control systems by crawling through a drain pipe and swimming across the Han River to the North on July 19, the South Korean military has said. He appears to have spent several days there before being caught.
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South Korean military chief Park Han-ki told parliament on Tuesday that Kim, who is 163cm tall and weighs 54kg, cut his way through barbed wire fences installed at the end of the pipe leading to the river.
A Seoul official said Kim is believed to have taken a similar path when he defected to the South in 2017, and authorities say he scoped out the area earlier in July, apparently in preparation for his latest journey.
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Kim’s story as a defector begins and, so far, ends in the city of Kaesong, a North Korean border town that hosted a now closed inter-Korean factory park and liaison office.
When that industrial project was shut down amid rising tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme in 2016, the economic shock prompted Kim to try his luck in the South in 2017, he said in a YouTube video filmed with a fellow defector in South Korea in June.
Rather than make his way through China, as the vast majority of North Korean defectors usually do, Kim headed south via the porous sea border toward the heavily guarded demilitarised zone that divides the two Koreas.
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“After passing through barbed-wire fences, I encountered minefields, which I bypassed and came to a reed field near the Han River where I stayed hidden for about three hours,” he said in the video, adding that he was living off mere breadcrumbs.
He started swimming, following the lights on the southern bank of the river. When he finally reached land, he let out a cry for help and was found by a unit of South Korean soldiers.
Little is known about how Kim made a living in South Korea, but a source with knowledge of his background said that he owed 20 million won (US$16,800) to at least one fellow defector from Kaesong.
“He had expressed his wish to become a security lecturer for students, like many other defectors do, but it never happened, partly because of the pandemic,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
According to police, a female defector in her 20s filed a complaint on June 12, accusing Kim of sexually assaulting her at his home. They interviewed him once on June 21, and he denied the accusations.
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The investigation gathered steam when one of Kim’s acquaintances reported to police on July 19 that he had threatened the woman and planned to flee to the North, a police official said.
A warrant for Kim’s arrest was issued two days later, but according to North Korean state media, he had already crossed the border.
By July 24, North Korean authorities had found him in Kaesong and said he displayed Covid-19 symptoms. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered the city be locked down and declared a state of emergency, state media reported on Sunday.
South Korean health officials said there was no sign that Kim was infected with the coronavirus before he left the South, and at least two people who were in close contact with him have tested negative.
Meanwhile, the UN human rights office reported on Tuesday that scores of North Korean women who had travelled abroad in a desperate search for work suffered abuse by security officials and police in the form of beatings, detention in unsanitary conditions, undernourishment and invasive body searches after being sent back home.
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights presented the findings in a new report that alleges “multiple and serious human rights violations by state security and police officials” in North Korea, based on 100 accounts from women who were detained in the secretive country from 2009 to 2019 after being forcibly returned home.
The women spoke to UN human rights officials after eventually fleeing North Korea following their detention.
Testimonies suggest the women, who often fell into the hands of human traffickers, faced bonded labour or sexual exploitation in other countries – then were deemed traitors or punished for contacting Christian groups abroad after their return.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
