SEOUL, South Korea — Reports say a North Korean man in his 30s has defected to South Korea.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency cites an unidentified government source as saying the defector crossed the western sea border in a small boat today.
Yonhap said a guard on the South Korean-controlled Baengnyeong Island led the man to safety.
South Korea’s top spy agency would not immediately comment.
Tensions are high on the divided peninsula after a South Korean warship sank in March in what investigators say was a strike by a North Korean torpedo. Forty-six sailors drowned.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry says more than 18,000 North Koreans have arrived in the South since the Korean War ended with a 1953 cease-fire.
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