12 August 2010 / REUTERS, PANMUNJOM
North Korea said on Wednesday it would return a South Korean pastor, who visited Pyongyang illegally, to his homeland through a rare crossing at a truce village that straddles the border.
The North’s state-run KCNA news agency said Rev. Han Sang-ryol would cross back into South Korea on Sunday at the heavily armed Panmunjom border point, where the truce halting the Korean War was signed in 1953. In the past, the post has been used as the point to return the remains of US soldiers killed during the war. The handover comes as tensions rise on the divided peninsula with the torpedoing earlier this year of a South Korean warship -- which Seoul blames on the North -- as well as a series of military drills and retaliatory artillery fire. The KCNA report said Han, a pro-unification activist, had requested to return via Panmunjom, and that the North’s Red Cross had sent its South Korean counterparts a message urging Seoul to take due measures to ensure safe return. The Unification Ministry said such a crossing “was quite rare,” without detailing the last time such a handover had occurred at Panmunjom. It confirmed the pastor had entered the North illegally. South Koreans must seek permission from their government to enter the North as the two Koreas are still technically at war because the Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. Han entered the North by air on June 12, the South’s Yonhap news agency said. It said South Korean authorities were planning to detain him as soon as he steps on to South Korean soil. Panmunjom, about 50 kilometers north of Seoul, is considered one of the last vestiges of the Cold War. Stony-faced soldiers from the North and South face off, sometimes only meters apart, on a daily basis.
