North Korean soldier defects after crossing the heavily mined DMZ border

(Photo by Lance Cpl. Sandra Garduno)

A North Korean soldier defected on Tuesday across the heavily mined Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) 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, according to Reuters.

suspected to be from took aerial photos of the site of an advanced U.S. antimissile system in South before crashing into an area near the inter-Korean border, a South Korean military official said Tuesday.

The camera-equipped , which was found last week, had taken several hundred photographs, including more than 10 shots of the deployment site of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, the official said.

A small aircraft that South Korea’s Military said is believed to be a North Korean drone.

The U.S. military began installing major elements of a THAAD battery in April at a site in Seongju County, Gyeongsang Province, about 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

South and the United States agreed last year to deploy the system to better cope with nuclear and missile threats.

According to the official, the , carrying a camera made by Japanese electronics giant Sony Corp., also took many photos of mountains and houses.

The suspected Korean was found by a local resident at a mountain in Inje County of the northeastern province of Gangwon, last Thursday and was reported to the authorities on Friday.

The South Korean military has said the object is similar in size and shape to a Korean that crashed on Baengnyeong, a border island in the Yellow Sea, in March 2014. That same year, other believed to have flown in from were found in areas near the border.

Popular Military contributed to this report

 

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