Seoul, Nov 14 (AFP) A North Korean soldier involved in anextremely rare and dramatic defection to the South was shotsix times by his own side as he drove to the heavily guardedborder and ran across under a hail of bullets.
The US-led United Nations Command (UNC), which monitorsthe Panmunjom border truce village where the defectionoccurred Monday, said the soldier had driven close to theheavily-guarded, military demarcation line separating the twoKoreas.
"He then exited the vehicle and continued fleeing southacross the line as he was fired upon by other soldiers fromNorth Korea," the UNC said in a statement.
An official with the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staffsaid the North's border guards fired at least 40 rounds.
A doctor treating the soldier -- who was airlifted to ahospital for emergency surgery -- said he had been shot half-a-dozen times and sustained a serious stomach injury.
"He has at least six gunshot wounds on his body and thepenetrating wound in the abdomen is the most serious", LeeCook-Jong told reporters.
"His organs are extremely damaged... we do not know howlong he can hold up," Lee said, describing the soldier'scondition as "very serious."It is very rare for the North's troops to defect at thetruce village, a major tourist attraction bisected by thedemarcation line and the only part of the frontier whereforces from the two sides come face-to-face.
The 1953 ceasefire ending Korean War hostilities wassigned at Panmunjom, and it has since hosted numerous roundsof inter-Korean talks -- sometimes held in huts that straddleboth sides of the border line.
The fact that the defector drove to the frontier suggestshe may not have been a member of the elite corps of NorthKorean troops posted to Panmunjom, who are carefully vettedand selected for their loyalty.
No tourists were present at the time, because tours donot run on Mondays.
According to the South Korean military there was noexchange of fire across the border, and the UNC statementstressed that no South Korean or US forces were harmed.
The incident, which happened in broad daylight around4:00pm, comes at a time of heightened tensions on the Koreanpeninsula over the North's nuclear weapons programme.
Unlike the rest of the frontier, Panmunjom is notfortified with minefields and barbed wire and the border ismarked only by a low concrete divider.
After racing across the frontier, the soldier took covernear a building on the South side.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff official said he was foundcollapsed in a pile of fallen leaves and recovered by threeSouth Korean soldiers crawling on their stomachs to hisposition.
There have been previous defections at Panmunjom, mostnotably in 1984 when Vasily Yakovlevich Matuzok -- an elitestudent from Moscow who was being groomed to become a Sovietdiplomat -- sprinted across the border and triggered a 30-minute gun battle that left four dead. (AFP)UZM.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.