A man who attached plastic foam pieces to his shoulders and swam down the Han River is the second North Korea to defect in the last week, South Korea’s military said.

The North Korea man, in his 20s, was spotted around 2:30 a.m. on June 18 at the northern part of the mouth of the Han River in Gimpo, just west of Seoul, according to Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

On June 13, a North Korean solder defected to South Korea through the border.

Questioning is under way to find out what caused the man who was found in the Han River to flee to the South.

When a South Korean Marine spotted him, the man screamed, “Don’t kill me. I am here to defect,” Yonhap reported.

Earlier this month, two of the four North Korean sailors rescued in the East Sea said they hoped to defect, Yonhap reported.

The two Koreas remain technically at war since the Korean War (1950-53) ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.

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Login To Your FaceBook to Make Comments </s> A North Korean soldier has fled to South Korea by swimming across the Han River, the second defection in a week.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the man had swum across a particularly narrow part of the fast-moving river after attaching foam to his shoulders to help him stay afloat.

Last week, a North Korean soldier walked across the heavily-guarded border that separates the countries.

Soldiers had previously been defecting at the rate of about one a year.

The latest defector, thought to be in his early twenties, was spotted at Gimpo, just west of the southern capital Seoul, Yonhap news agency reported.

He screamed "Don't kill me, I am here to defect", at a South Korean marine who had seen him, Yonhap said.

The soldier will now be questioned by military officials.

North and South Korea are technically still at war, since the conflict between them ended in 1953 with a truce, not a formal peace treaty.

Seoul says more than 30,000 North Koreans have defected to the South since the end of the Korean War, the majority via China, which has the longest border with the North. </s> A North Korean man defected to South Korea on Sunday after swimming south with plastic foam pieces on his shoulders to help keep him afloat, the military was quoted as saying. It was the second such rare defection across the heavily fortified border that divides the peninsula in less than a week.

Start the conversation, or Read more at Stars and Stripes. </s> SEOUL, South Korea — A North Korean man defected to South Korea on Sunday after swimming south with plastic foam pieces on his shoulders to help keep him afloat, the military was quoted as saying.

It was the second such rare defection across the heavily fortified border that divides the peninsula in less than a week. South Korean officials have said the number of North Korean defectors has been on the rise, but most travel via China and other countries first.

South Korean marines found the man, in his early 20s, around 2:30 a.m. Sunday near an observation post on the northern part of the Han River just west of Seoul in Gimpo, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The military said he was discovered at a particularly narrow stretch in the river after swimming south buoyed by the plastic foam pieces, according to Yonhap. He reportedly screamed, “Don’t kill me. I am here to defect,” after he was spotted by a South Korean marine.

The Unification Ministry, which oversees ties between the two countries, has said the number of North Koreans who have fled to the South since the end of the Korean War surpassed 30,000 in November.

Officials believe people are increasingly trying to escape the isolated country as leader Kim Jong Un moves to consolidate his rule after taking over when his father, Kim Jong Il, died of a heart attack in 2011.

Tensions also have been on the rise over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and the U.N. Security Council has accordingly tightened economic sanctions against the communist state.

It’s extremely difficult to cross the border by land or sea because the two Koreas remain technically at war and are separated by the Demilitarized Zone, which is dotted with land mines. Barbed wire and guard posts also protect the shoreline of waters near the border.

Most defectors come to the South after first escaping to China and transiting through other countries. Once they arrive in South Korea, they are automatically granted citizenship after a three-month transition period for re-education and debriefing.

But some do manage to cross over. On Tuesday, a North Korean soldier crossed the Military Demarcation Line in the central sector of the DMZ and said he wanted to defect, military officials said. Two of four North Korean sailors recently rescued in the sea off the peninsula’s east coast also reportedly said they wished to defect. </s> A North Korean man defected to South Korea by crossing the border, the South Korean army said. This is the second defection in less than a week. The defector was found in the Han River in Seoul on Sunday, according to the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff as cited by Yonhap news agency. South Korean authorities were interrogating the man to determine his motive for fleeing to the South.

This is the second desertion in less than a week after a North Korean soldier fled to South Korea through the Demilitarized Zone, the heavily fortified border that divides the two Koreas, on Tuesday, the first such case since September 2016, Efe news reported.

The number of North Korean refugees in South Korea reached 30,000 at the end of last year, according to the South’s Ministry of Unification.

Most deserters, however, escape by crossing North Korea’s northern border with China.

The annual number of defectors steadily increased from 1,384 in 2005 to 2,914 in 2009, but fell between 2011-2015 owing to stricter control by North Korea at the border and tougher punishments for those caught fleeing, according to the ministry’s data.

North and South Korea are technically still at war, as the Korean War (1950-1953) ended with an armistice but no peace treaty has ever been signed. </s> The defector was supported by makeshift floating devices made of plastic foam, the news agency reported.

​South Korean sentries spotted the man in Gimpo, a town just west of Seoul, in the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said according to the Yonhap report.

Officials took him into custody to ascertain what motivated his decision to leave the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The event marks the second defection in less than a week. On June 14, a North Korean soldier walked across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean Peninsula, Sputnik reported.

Pyongyang has called for defectors to be sent back to the DPRK, which some analysts say could be used as a bargaining chip in getting the North to sit down and potentially restart positive inter-Korean relations.

“North Korea may be more aggressive on the repatriation issue,” Jang Cheol-un, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, told the Korea Times on June 10. Pyongyang may insist, for instance, that 13 waitresses who defected to South Korea from China last year return home before it returns to the negotiation table.

The Korean War came to an end in a 1953 truce, which created the DMZ; the North and South are still technically at war, as Pyongyang and Seoul do not have a formal peace treaty in effect. </s> A North Korean soldier defected on Tuesday across the heavily mined Demilitarised Zone border to South Korea, the South's military said, amid high tension over the North's defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons. The South Korean military is questioning the soldier, the South's Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

Start the conversation, or Read more at Reuters. </s> SEOUL, South Korea — Dozens of elderly South Koreans crossed the heavily fortified border into North Korea on Monday for heart-wrenching meetings with relatives most haven't seen since they were separated by the turmoil of the Korean War.

The weeklong event at North Korea's Diamond Mountain resort comes as the rival Koreas boost reconciliation efforts amid a diplomatic push to resolve a standoff over North Korea's drive for a nuclear weapons program that can reliably target the continental United States.

The temporary reunions are highly emotional because most participants are elderly people eager to see their loved ones once more before they die. Most of their families were driven apart during the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula still in a technical state of war.

Buses carrying about 90 elderly South Koreans and their family members were moving into the Diamond Mountain resort after crossing into North Korea. Earlier in the morning, the South Koreans, some in wheelchairs and aided by Red Cross workers, had left the buses briefly to enter the South Korean immigration office in the eastern border town of Goseong.

They were to reunite with their long-lost North Korean relatives on Monday afternoon at the start of a three-day reunion. A separate round of reunions from Friday to Sunday will involve more than 300 other South Koreans, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry.

Past reunions have produced powerful images of elderly Koreans crying, embracing and caressing each other. Nearly 20,000 people have participated in 20 rounds of face-to-face reunions since 2000. Another 3,700 exchanged video messages with their North Korean relatives under a short-lived communication program from 2005 to 2007.

No one has had a second chance to see their relatives.

Many of the South Korean participants are war refugees born in North Korea who will be meeting their siblings or the infant children they left behind, many of them now into their 70s.

Park Hong-seo, an 88-year-old Korean War veteran from the southern city of Daegu, said he always wondered whether he'd faced his older brother in battle.

After graduating from a Seoul university, Park's brother settled in the North Korean coastal town of Wonsan as a dentist in 1946. After the war broke out, Park was told by a co-worker that his brother refused to flee to the South because he had a family in the North and was a surgeon in the North Korean army.

Park fought for the South as a student soldier and was among the allied troops who took over Wonsan in October 1950. The U.S.-led forces advanced farther north in the following weeks before being driven back by a mass of Chinese forces after Beijing intervened in the conflict.

Park learned that his brother died in 1984. At Diamond Mountain, he will meet his North Korean nephew and niece, who are 74 and 69, respectively.

"I want to ask them what his dying wish was and what he said about me," Park said in a telephone interview last week. "I wonder whether there's a chance he saw me when I was in Wonsan."

During the three years since the reunions were last held, the North tested three nuclear weapons and multiple missiles that demonstrated they potentially could strike the continental United States.

North Korea has shifted to diplomacy in recent months. Leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a son of North Korean war refugees, agreed to resume the reunions during the first of their two summits this year in April.

South Korea sees the separated families as the largest humanitarian issue created by the war, which killed and injured millions and cemented the division of the Korean Peninsula into the North and South. The ministry estimates there are currently about 600,000 to 700,000 South Koreans with immediate or extended relatives in North Korea.

But Seoul has failed to persuade Pyongyang to accept its long-standing call for more frequent reunions with more participants.

The limited number of reunions cannot meet the demands of divided family members, who are now mostly in their 80s and 90s, South Korean officials say. More than 75,000 of the 132,000 South Koreans who have applied to participate in reunions have died, according to the Seoul ministry.

Analysts say North Korea sees the reunions as an important bargaining chip and doesn't want them expanded because they give its people better awareness of the outside world. While South Korea uses a computerized lottery to pick participants for the reunions, North Korea is believed to choose based on loyalty to its authoritarian leadership.

Chang reported from Goseong, South Korea. AP writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. </s> A South Korean man narrowly avoided jail for deliberately making himself fat to dodge compulsory military service.

The 21-year-old, who wasn't named, packed on about 65lbs in just six months after graduating high school so he would be unfit to serve.

Standing five feet nine inches, the man ballooned from 187lbs in February 2016 to more than 250lbs when he had his second physical examination in July.

His plan worked as his 36.1 body mass index was too high for the military and he was given a less demanding public service position.

However, police later found he gained the weight deliberately and he was arrested and found guilty on Sunday, according to the Korea Times.

The Cheongju District Court give him a suspended sentence instead of the up to five year maximum prison term for draft dodging.

Fleeing, causing self-injury, or otherwise cheating to avoid the two-year military service requirement is illegal under South Korean law.

All men aged 18 to 35 have to complete the service, with the only exemptions being for Olympic medalists or gold medal winners at the Asian Games.

Conscientious or religious objection is not recognised, leading to at least 400 people being imprisoned every year for refusing on those grounds.

Conscripts receive as little as £106 a month plus a pair of sneakers, which the government budget in some years hasn't been able to afford.

Trainees start with a grueling five-week basic training course where bullying is rife and they are subjected to gas drills.

The requirement was introduced in 1957, four years after the Korean war, so the population would be ready to defend against North Korean invasion.
A North Korean soldier defects to South Korea after swimming across the Han River, the second North Korean defection in a week.