SEOUL: Dramatic footage of a North Korean soldier’s defection released on Wednesday showed him racing across the border under fire from former comrades, and then being hauled to safety by South Korean troops.

The footage also showed a North Korean guard briefly crossing the border in hot pursuit before retreating.

The 24-year-old soldier, identified only by his surname, Oh, was shot at least four times in his desperate escape bid at the Panmunjom truce village on Nov 13, and has been recovering in a South Korean hospital.

It is very rare for the North’s troops to defect at Panmunjom, a major tourist attraction and the only part of the border where forces from the two sides come face-to-face.

The video released by the UNC began by showing the defector’s vehicle travelling at speed along an empty road leading to the truce village before stopping near the heavily armed border. He then got out of the jeep and ran, pursued by North Korean soldiers with their weapons drawn and firing.

The footage then showed the badly injured man being pulled to safety by two South Korean soldiers who crawled to reach him just south of the dividing line.

UN Command spokesman Colonel Chad Carroll told journalists that one of the border guards ran across the military demarcation line for a “few seconds before returning back to the north side”.

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2017