Lee censures defense minister over border security failure

President Lee Myung-bak censured his defense minister Thursday over revelations that South Korea's military was unaware that a North Korean soldier had slipped past the heavily armed border until he showed up at the barracks of a front-line unit in a defection bid.

The military has been under fire for failing to detect the Oct. 2 crossing, especially because the North Korean soldier was taken into custody only after he knocked on the entrance to a front-line unit on the eastern section of the border.

On Thursday morning, Lee called in Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and criticized the lax military discipline, saying the military has brought a "big disappointment" to the people, according to the presidential office.

Lee also ordered the minister to investigate the case thoroughly, punish those responsible and examine the overall guarding system so as to come up with fundamental measures to prevent a similar incident from happening again, it said.

In response, Kim held a video conference later in the day with senior military commanders to urge them to stay on high alert and prepare precautionary measures for tighter security.

"In light of this incident, military commanders should fulfill their duties to prepare tighter security measures to make sure people feel safe going about their lives," Kim said during the conference. "I will sternly punish those responsible (for the incident) as soon as the investigation is concluded."

Also later in the day, Gen. Jung Seung-jo, the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made fresh revelations that the North Korean soldier turned himself in at the barracks after his knock at the entrance of a nearby guard unit about 30 meters away went unanswered.

That means the defector wandered around inside South Korea longer than initially thought while looking for a place to surrender, after slipping across the border undetected in what is considered one of the biggest border security failures in South Korea in years.

Jung said during a parliamentary audit of the military that troops were inside the two-story building when the North Korean soldier knocked at its entrance, but they appear to have failed to hear the sound.

According to the JCS chairman, the North Korean soldier left his unit about 50 kilometers north of the border around 4 a.m. on Sept. 29 before arriving at the border around 8 p.m. on Oct. 2. He then crossed the Demilitarized Zone, a 4-kilometer buffer zone between the two sides, and reached the South Korean border fence around 10:30 p.m.

He slipped past the South's border fence before turning himself in around 11 p.m.

"I feel sorry for causing confusion with the wrong account of what happened," the general told lawmakers. "We will take follow-up measures based on the outcome of a JCS team's investigation."

The military originally announced that the North Korean soldier was spotted on a surveillance camera and was taken into custody after he expressed his desire to defect. The JCS team's investigation later found the military was unaware of the defector's presence until he appeared at the unit.

The absence of surveillance camera footage from the time has also spurred speculation the military might have deleted it in an attempt to cover up the mistake. Officials later said the camera was malfunctioning at the time.

Officials also said the initial account of what happened was incorrect because a noncommissioned officer at the unit reported details of the incident based on his "assumption."

The report was later corrected, but a JCS officer ignored the corrected report, officials said.

On Friday, a group of lawmakers belonging to the parliamentary defense committee will visit the front-line unit to check the border defense system and receive briefings on what happened on the day of the border crossing, according to officials.

Though defection across the border is considered rare, two other soldiers from the communist nation have made their way across the heavily armed border this year alone.

Just four days after the Oct. 2 defection, an 18-year-old solider defected Saturday after reportedly shooting two of his officers to death. Earlier, a third North Korean soldier crossed the land border into the South on Aug. 17, waving a white flag, an international symbol of capitulation.

The two Koreas remain technically at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap)