North Korean leader Kim Jong-un apologized for murder of a South Korean officer in its territorial waters, the Presidency’s office in Seoul reported this Friday.
According to South Korea’s news agency Yonhap, Kim called the incident “a shameful case” and apologized for “disappointing President Moon Jae-in and the South Koreans”.
What happened?
On Thursday, the South Korean Defense Ministry accused North Korea to kill one of your officers, which had disappeared on the border between the two countries, and having incinerated his body, an act described as “brutal”.
The ministry said Pyongyang had been asked for explanations, according to the statement then released.
The 47-year-old officer had disappeared on Monday when he was aboard a Ministry of Fisheries boat at the time close to the island of Yeonpyeong, about ten kilometers from the western maritime border, the tense and disputed Line of North.
North Korean troops “found the man in its waters and committed a brutal act by shooting him and incinerating his body, according to the exhaustive military analysis we made of various intelligence data,” it said in the ministry’s note.
The South Korean vessel was checking for possible unauthorized fishing near the inter-Korean maritime border, where there have already been several naval incidents between the two countries and deadly attacks attributed to North Korea.
The incident is expected to deepen tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang.
Tension between the two Koreas
Relations between the two Koreas remain tense, especially after the stalemate in nuclear negotiations between North Korea and the United States.
In June, Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in its territory in retaliation for the South Korean civilian pamphlet campaign launched against North Korea.
At the height of its Cold War rivalry, North Korea often forcibly towed South Korean fishing boats that operated near the sea border, keeping some of the crew on board and returning others.
South Korean defections to North Korea are highly unusual. But more than 30,000 North Koreans have fled to South Korea in the past 20 years for political and economic reasons.
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