"I want to go back to North Korea"...North Korean defector who attempted to defect to North Korea by stealing bus

ⓒYTN

Police arrested a man in his 30s who stole a village bus in Paju, Gyeonggi Province and tried to cross the Tongil Bridge, a civilian access control line.

Paju Police Station said yesterday (1st) that it arrested a man in his 30s who stole a bus and attempted to defect to the North on charges of theft and handed over his/her recruits to the security investigation unit of the Gyeonggi Northern Office.

The man is known to have defected from North Korea more than 10 years ago and lived in Seoul.

A is suspected of stealing a village bus parked in a garage in Munsan-eup, Paju-si, and driving to the southern end of Tongil Bridge at around 1 a.m. that day. The car key was reportedly in the bus at the time.

According to a police investigation, A was driving a bus from the southern end of Tongil Bridge toward the north and stopped when he hit a barricade installed by the military while driving despite the restriction of a South Korean soldier on guard duty. The police, who were dispatched after receiving a report, arrested A at the scene. At the time of arrest, A was reported to have stated that he was not drunk or taking drugs, and that "he tried to go back because his life in South Korea was difficult and he missed his mother in North Korea."

The police plan to charge A with bus theft and investigate the specific motive of the crime.

Reporter Park Sun-young of Digital News Team