By Jun Ji-hye
The North Korean soldier who defected to South Korea through the Joint Security Area (JSA) Monday is still in critical condition after undergoing a second surgery Wednesday for his gunshot wounds, hospital officials said.
The Ajou University Hospital in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, said the three-and-a-half-hour surgery was successful as the medical team led by Dr. Lee Cook-jong removed damaged tissue and one remaining bullet from the body of the North Korean soldier. But it added it could not give a definite answer on whether the patient will survive.
Dr. Lee told reporters Wednesday a number of complications could develop due to the soldier’s massive hemorrhaging.
What has made the situation more difficult was a significant number of parasites, including a 27-centimeter-long roundworm, found in the soldier’s body, which reflects the dire situation in North Korean barracks.
Lee said he has only ever seen such an amount of worms in textbooks in more than 20 years of his career as a surgeon.
“Such a thing is very rare for South Koreans,” he said, adding that undigested food, mostly corn, was also found inside the patient.
According to the South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), around 40 gunshots were fired from the North at the soldier as he ran across the military demarcation line (MDL) inside the JSA.
During the first surgery that was conducted right after he was taken to the hospital, five bullets including those from AK-47 assault rifles were removed from his body, the JCS said. The first surgery took about five hours.
The doctor said his team has done the best to remove the worms and other pollutants from the soldier’s body, but is ready to conduct another surgery at any time once any problems occur.
The United Nations Command (UNC), which assumes operational control inside the JSA, is currently carrying out an investigation into whether the repressive state violated an armistice agreement in its response to the defection.
UNC Military Armistice Commission said it has notified the (North) Korean People’s Army (KPA) that the soldier is being medically treated at this time and an investigation into the incident is underway.
The JSA was established after the signing of the armistice, which brought a ceasefire of the 1950-53 Korean War in July 27, 1953, and has served as a place for inter-Korean dialogue since then. It is located approximately 56 kilometers from Seoul.
North Korea has yet to issue any comments on the case, which marked the first defection to the South through the JSA, in the truce village of Panmunjeom, in 10 years. A North Korean soldier defected to the South via the JSA in 1998 and another in 2007.
Meanwhile, the UNC originally planned to disclose part of CCTV footage of the scene of the defection Thursday, but postponed the plan, citing more discussions were necessary on how far it could open the footage to the media.
The CCTV footage is cited as core evidence to show whether North Korean soldiers who chased the defector have crossed MDL and fired shots even after the fleeing solider crossed the border line.