A North Korean defector living in South Korea was detained on Tuesday after ramming a stolen bus into a barricade on a bridge near the heavily militarized border, in an apparent attempt to get back to the North, Yonhap news agency reported.
The incident took place at around 1:30 a.m. (16:30 GMT on Monday) at the Tongil Bridge in Paju, northwest of the capital Seoul, after the man ignored warnings from soldiers guarding the bridge and attempted to drive through, Yonhap said, citing city police.
Paju police referred queries on the incident to provincial police authorities. The northern Gyeonggi police agency could not be reached for comment.
The man aged in his 30s who had defected more than a decade ago told police that he was trying to return to North Korea after struggling to settle in the South, the report said.
Maybe that person had trouble adjusting to SK life and was missing his country and/or people back home. Nothing to see here. It is only “surprising” because presumably they took some risk in leaving and because we only ever hear about NK in the context of its authoritarian government and it being some dystopian nightmare presumably, though if we’re being honest most of us don’t know two shits about the country and I bet to some people it’s simply home.
Why does anyone want to go back to any country that others are desperate to leave? For reasons…