“It’s not a matter of friendship,” former North Korean soldier Oh Chong Song said, not blaming his ex-compatriots for shooting him five times as he fled to South Korea.
A former North Korean soldier whose dramatic escape across the world's most heavily fortified border made international headlines said he doesn't blame his fellow soldiers for shooting him.
Oh's escape was the first of its kind in three decades and came at a time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas, as well as between President Donald Trump and North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un, who were threatening one another with nuclear destruction. Two months before Oh fled, North Korea conducted its sixth, and by far its most powerful, nuclear test and then launched its furthest-flying intercontinental ballistic missile two weeks after the escape in late November.
Oh denied rumors that appeared in South Korean newspaper Dong-a Ilbo, suggesting he was wanted for murder in North Korea. However, he admitted to drinking and getting into unspecified trouble with friends, something he feared would cause him to be punished. North Korea's elusive, tightly run state devotes a considerable amount of its limited resources to its military and security apparatus. Up to 30,000 North Korean defectors are registered with South Korea's Unification Ministry, though an unknown number of individuals are believed to have"double-defected" back to North Korea over the years. Seoul has only recognized only 13 such cases, but the true figure may be in the hundreds.
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