News Nov 13.: North Korean soldier defecting to South

  According to news agency AFP, a North Korean soldier was shot and injured by his own side while successfully defecting to South Korea at the border truce village of Panmunjom.

"Our military has taken in a North Korean soldier after he crossed from a North Korea post towards our Freedom House," Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement.

An JCS official said the soldier was evacuated to a private hospital by a UN helicopter. The official said the South's soldiers heard a gunshot and then retrieved the unarmed soldier in the mid-afternoon.

Military officials from the two sides have used Panmunjom frequently in the past for talks. Unlike the rest of the frontier, Panmunjom is not fortified and the border is marked only by a low concrete divider.

Over the decades since the peninsula was divided, dozens of North Korean soldiers have fled to the South through the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) along the rest of the border.

According to the news, more than 30,000 North Korean civilians have fled their homeland since the two nations were separated in 1948. But it is very rare for civilians to cross the closely guarded border with the South, which is fortified with minefields and barbed wire.

Most flee across the North's frontier with China and then move on to a third country to seek passage to South Korea.