An American has crossed the heavily fortified border from South Korea into North Korea, officials confirmed on Tuesday, amid high tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
The U.S.-led U.N. Command overseeing the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, confirmed that the U.S. citizen was on tour around the Korean border village of Panmunjom before crossing the border into North Korea without proper authorization. There were also reports saying that the man who crossed the border is an American soldier.
“A U.S. National on a JSA orientation tour crossed, without authorization, the Military Demarcation Line into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). We believe he is currently in DPRK custody and are working with our KPA counterparts to resolve this incident,” the U.N. Command said in a Twitter post on Tuesday.
The post gave no further details on who the person is or why he crossed the border. North Korean state-run media didn’t immediately comment on the border incident.
A person who was part of the tour they saw the incident claimed they had just visited one of the buildings when “this man gives out a loud ‘ha ha ha,’ and just runs in between some buildings,” reported CBS News. The witness said the organizers of the tour didn’t immediately react and appeared confused.
“I thought it was a bad joke at first, but when he didn’t come back, I realized it wasn’t a joke, and then everybody reacted and things got crazy,” the unnamed person allegedly told CBS.
After that, the tour group was ushered back to a building for everyone to give witness statements. “I’m telling you this because it actually hit me quite hard,” the witness alleged. “It was on the way back in the bus, and we got to one of the checkpoints … someone said we were 43 going in and 42 coming back.”
Panmunjom, located inside the 154-mile-long DMZ, has been jointly overseen by the U.N. Command and North Korea since its creation at the close of the Korean War. Bloodshed and gunfire have occasionally occurred there, but it has also been a venue for numerous talks and a popular tourist spot.
