The South Korean government repatriated two of five rescued North Korean fishermen via the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjeom on Tuesday, 10 days after their boat was found adrift off Uleungdo Island in the East Sea.
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| A North Korea sailor is handed over to the communist state at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjeom on Tuesday. (Yonhap) |
Seoul’s Unification Ministry said that it refused to send back the three others, who expressed their wishes to live in the South, despite repeated demands from Pyongyang that all five sailors be repatriated.
“At around 11 a.m., we handed over the two sailors who wanted to return home to the North Korean authorities,” a ministry official told reporters.
On July 4, the South Korean coast guard rescued all of the five sailors on their drifting boat. After interviewing each fisherman, the Seoul authorities decided to return only three of them and let the rest live in the South to respect their wishes to defect.
Two days after they were rescued, the South Korean Red Cross informed the North Korean authorities that it would return only two of the five sailors. But the North Korean Red Cross demanded that all of the sailors be sent back.
The issues surrounding the repatriation of the sailors erupted as cross-border relations show no signs of improving. The tensions have remained high, with the North continuing its harsh rhetoric against the South, particularly about the recent establishment of a U.N. field office to monitor the human rights situation in the North.
By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)
