SEOUL, South Korea \u2014 South Korea\u2019s military fired 20 rounds of warning shots Thursday as North Korean soldiers approached a borderline after their comrade defected to South Korea, officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Korean media reported there were sounds of gunfire from the North after South Korea\u2019s warning shots. South Korean defense officials couldn\u2019t immediately confirm the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
North Korean soldiers have occasionally \u2014 and often safely \u2014 fled through the land border. Thursday\u2019s defection came nearly 40 days after another North Korean soldier crossed the jointly controlled area at the border, the only places where rival troops are only feet away, amid a barrage of bullets fired by colleagues. He was shot multiple times and remains hospitalized in South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Thursday morning, another soldier, whose personal details weren\u2019t immediately disclosed, used a different section of the border to defect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time when the soldier arrived at a front-line South Korean guard post, there was no shooting from the North, according to South Korea\u2019s Defense Ministry and Joint Chiefs of Staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But later Thursday, South Korea\u2019s military detected North Korean soldiers approaching a military demarcation line at the border before it broadcast a warning and fired 20 rounds of warning shots from machine guns, said a South Korean defense official, requesting anonymity based on department rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The latest defection increased to four the number of North Korean soldiers who fled through the land border this year, the Defense Ministry said. About 30,000 North Koreans have defected to South Korea mostly via China since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Animosities run high on the Korean Peninsula as North Korea has been accelerating its weapons tests as part of its stated goal of achieving a nuclear missile capable of striking anywhere in the United States. Last month, North Korea test-fired its biggest and most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Korea\u2019s military fired 20 rounds of warning shots Thursday as North Korean soldiers approached a borderline after their comrade defected to South Korea, officials said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":103106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":8,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,8,12,26,62],"tags":[],"coauthors":[666],"class_list":["post-68120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-flashpoints","category-news","category-newsletters","category-pentagon-congress"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"Z44KFLWBMFBADEUO7HFW4ASPDY","arc_canonical_url":"\/flashpoints\/2017\/12\/21\/north-korea-soldier-flees-to-south-via-heavily-fortified-border\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n