There are nearly 25,000 North Korean defectors in South Korea and, therefore, it’s understandable there are sometimes difficulties in managing them. For this reason, people usually think, some refugees return to the impoverished North, mostly via China.
But it simply defies our understanding that a North Korean defector who settled in the South in 2007 crossed a maritime border in the West Sea Wednesday night to return home, during a heightened military alert.
The refugee, 28, surnamed Lee, stole a fishing boat on which he had been working as a crew member for two weeks on the border island of Yeonpyeong and used the vessel to cross the border. The South Korean military detected his passage on radar at 10:46 p.m. but couldn’t stop him because the boat was then only 1 kilometer from the Northern Limit Line (NLL).
It’s surprising that Lee evaded detection although he departed from Yeonpyeong Island, a hotspot on the border between the two Koreas that was shelled by North Korea in November 2010, and where an upgraded state of alert was maintained because of recent inter-Korean tensions. The military said there was a blind spot south of the NLL because the radar was mainly intended to keep watch on the northern region of the NLL, explanations that make no sense at all.
This is the first time a North Korean defector has stolen a vessel and crossed the sea border to return home. Lee didn’t encounter any deterrence during the 16 minutes it took to travel from Yeonpyeong to his arrival at the NLL.
Lee’s defection raises the possibility there could be big holes in our security system at a time when the military promises to maintain a watertight defense posture against an escalation of tension, since North Korea’s third nuclear test.
The incident also testifies to the existence of loopholes in our management of North Korean defectors. Although this was the fourth time Lee had defected from and returned to the North, the authorities had not placed him under any special monitoring. There is no denying the possibility he might have worked as an agent while in the South.
The military needs to use this case as an occasion to tighten its vigilance and reexamine its system so similar incidents won’t take place.